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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/25029316">A Sea of Troubles</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/ecphrasis/pseuds/ecphrasis'>ecphrasis</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Avatar: The Last Airbender</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Aged-Up Character(s), Alternate Universe - Arranged Marriage, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Arranged Marriage, Awkwardness, Canonical Child Abuse, Cross-cultural, Cultural Differences, Epic Poetry, Eventual Katara/Zuko (Avatar), F/M, Family Bonding, Fire Nation Royal Family, Firelord Iroh (Avatar), Flashbacks, Hakoda (Avatar) is a Good Parent, Inspired by Hamlet, Internal Conflict, Male-Female Friendship, Married Katara/Zuko (Avatar), Order of the White Lotus, Ozai (Avatar) Being a Terrible Parent, POV Male Character, Politics, Religious Fanaticism, Road Trips, Slow Burn, Slow Burn Katara/Zuko (Avatar), Slow Romance, Southern Water Tribe, Zuko (Avatar) Has Issues, Zuko (Avatar)-centric, Zuko is a literature fanboy, Zuko is an Awkward Turtleduck, azula has mommy issues, oral traditions</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>In-Progress</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-07-02</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-12-31</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-04 08:07:50</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>17</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>59,672</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/25029316</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/ecphrasis/pseuds/ecphrasis</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Driven from his home in the Fire Nation and forced to ally with his Water Tribe wife, Zuko comes face to face with his heritage and must choose once and for all where his loyalties lie.</p><p>(Newly revived for an extended, better-paced ending, beginning Chapter 16.)</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Azula &amp; Zuko (Avatar), Hakoda &amp; Zuko (Avatar), Iroh &amp; Ursa (Avatar), Iroh &amp; Zuko (Avatar), Katara/Zuko (Avatar), Ozai &amp; Zuko (Avatar), Sokka &amp; Zuko (Avatar), Ursa &amp; Zuko (Avatar)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>274</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>1123</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. Frighted With False Fire</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>“Zuzu, what are you doing?” Azula asks. Her nose is upturned, her features disdainful in the light of the dawn sun. Zuko stuffs the blue mask deeper into its crevice, and draws out his decoy, a bottle of good liquor, sheepishly. It’s impossible to lie to Azula, but she’ll occasionally buy a half truth, if she’s distracted enough, or in a good enough mood.</p><p>“Drinking on your wedding day, without your bride?” She asks. Her voice has a tattle-tale ring to it, and he knows he’s going to hear about this from his uncle later. Prince Zuko, he’ll probably say. Only a foolish man dulls his senses instead of sharpening his wit.</p><p>“Don’t tell me you won’t be doing the same,” he says. </p><p>“I won’t,” she says. And the way she says it, Zuko knows his uncle has a problem coming. Zuko is pliant, biddable by his mother. He may sulk and pout and rage, but he’ll always do as she asks in the end, and what Iroh wants, she wants. Azula has no such compunctions. He doubts Azula will see her wedding day with King Kuei, one way or another. “But since you’re drinking, give me some.” Obligingly, he pours his sister a generous helping, and has about half the amount himself. Much as he doesn’t want to wed the Water Tribe girl, he doesn’t want to embarrass himself either. A prince is nothing without his honor, his uncle is fond of saying.</p><p>_____________________________</p><p>“You look very handsome, Prince Zuko,” his uncle says. Beside him, Ursa’s eyes are moist with unshed tears. Zuko is silent, still, waiting for the rest of the Fire Lord’s speech. “I am grateful to you for being willing to step beyond tradition and marry for peace,” Iroh says, as though Zuko has had any say in the matter. As though he has had a hand in choosing his bride for himself.</p><p>“It’s nothing,” he mutters.</p><p>“My only son,” Ursa says, and she wipes her eyes. Her wrist is bare of a marriage bracelet, her hair devoid the flame that formerly signified her as the Fire Lord’s wife. Those who marry into the royal family do not remarry. Still, she stands so close to Iroh that his robes brush against her own.</p><p>“Mom-” he says, but his mother embraces him. “I hope you’ll be happy,” she says.</p><p>The tigerlions live in packs, a single male and his mates. When he grows old, or weak, or sick, another will challenge him. Zuko, on a hunting trip once with his father, saw the entire spectacle. The victor, after biting off his opponent’s head, proceeded to slaughter every single cub.</p><p>“Prince Zuko,” Iroh says. “May you strive for the virtue of moderation.” And Zuko flushes, because he knows Azula, as usual, has ratted him out.</p><p>_____________________________</p><p>Fire Nation weddings take place at sunset. Zuko is dressed head to toe in red brocade, in golden lace, in a fine, flowing cloak that he knows costs more than most of his people make in a year. It is embroidered with golden leaves and twisting vines, part of Iroh’s artistic program, a motif designed to represent the Fire Nation’s new flourishing under his reign. And Zuko, dressed in his uncle’s symbols, is just as much a symbol himself.</p><p>If Azula were the firstborn, if she meant anything, she would be out in the fields with Zhao, waging war against the usurper Fire Lord, who killed his brother instead of besting him in an Agni Kai, and permanently shamed the entire bloodline as a result. But Zuko, his father’s heir, his uncle’s heir, is standing complacent beneath the summer sun, garbed in vines as tangling as any chain. He wears the pin of the Crown Prince in his hair, the one Fire Lord Sozin gave to Avatar Roku, or so the story goes. When his uncle processes in front of him, he bends his knees, and touches his forehead to the earth.</p><p>And then Iroh reaches down, and touches his shoulder, and draws him up, and embraces him, and Zuko feels the warmth and the gentleness in his uncle’s embrace. His father would have whispered something cutting, some word designed to destabilize, to induce terror. Iroh only pats his arm, as though he truly does love him.</p><p>Zuko knows his father would have killed Lu Ten, had he usurped Iroh. He’s still not entirely convinced his father didn’t have Lu Ten killed, beneath the eternal walls of Ba Sing Se.</p><p>_____________________________</p><p>The girl comes next. She’s dressed head to toe in flowing purple fabric, the perfect blend of Water Tribe blue and Fire Nation red. He knows just how expensive the dye is. He can’t see an inch of her skin, veiled as she is by layer upon layer of drapery. He wonders if she’s irreparably ugly, and that’s why they’ve hidden her from him. Almost unconsciously, he reaches for his scarred cheek, and pulls back only at the last second, reminding himself of decorum. He hears, or imagines he hears, his sister’s low snicker. Perhaps his uncle, always jovial, has found him a girl as ugly as he is.</p><p>Her hands are bare, he finds. They are dark brown, the color of rich farmland, of the riverbank in the provinces where he and Azula used to race paper boats. The Fire Sage takes her slender palm and lays it in his own, and he feels her trembling.</p><p>He doesn’t understand how she can be cold, buried as she is in layer upon layer of thick purple cloth. Isn’t she from the South Pole? Isn’t she used to snow and ice? How can she be shivering in the heat of a Fire Nation summer?</p><p>He says his vows woodenly. She repeats after him, her voice muffled, obscured. When at last the Fire Sage bids him to lift his wife’s heavy veil and reveal her face, Zuko expects to encounter a girl torn to shreds by some polar monster.</p><p>Instead, he finds himself staring into two wide-blown blue eyes, and a face slack with terror. He almost looks behind himself, convinced that some ghoul must be rising towards them, coming from his blind spot. He realizes, just before he presses his lips against hers, that she is quaking in her calfskin slippers, and that her terror is of him.</p><p>It’s a new sensation.</p><p>The servants fear Azula. The soldiers feared his father. And everyone fears the Dragon of the West. But no one has ever looked at him as though he’s about to devour them and cast their soul into the sixth hell. He only brushes his lips against hers, a touch so light the memory of it floats around him like mist, like when, riding his ostrich-horse, he only barely manages to duck under a low hanging branch.</p><p>He remembers that they were not supposed to wed. That she was never supposed to be an offering to the Fire Lord. That, had her brother not run off with Zuko’s first betrothed, she would still be safely ensconced in the ice huts of the south.</p><p>He knows what Commander Yon Rha did to her mother before he killed her.</p><p>Hatred of his own impotency bubbles up in him, and the setting sun leaves him feeling weak and helpless.</p><p>She is completely alone, unescorted, abandoned by her own. He wonders what it must be like to be the wife of a man whose soldiers murdered your mother.</p><p>_____________________________</p><p>After the ceremony, there’s a feast by moonlight in the gardens, and the wine flows freely, and music filters through the trees. Zuko is sweating in his robes, but he doesn’t dare to take off his vine-embroidered cloak. He finds his uncle discussing the withdrawal of troops from the South Pole’s oilfields with the new commander of the Southern Raiders.</p><p>“Ah, Prince Zuko,” the Fire Lord says. Zuko bows, and the soldier melts into the swirling merriment. “That was a most beautiful wedding. It reminded me of my own wedding day as Crown Prince, many years ago.”</p><p>“It was nice,” Zuko agrees, noncommittally. His uncle beams, looks genuinely, truly happy.</p><p>“And Princess Katara is a very lovely girl,” Iroh remarks. His tone is fond. Zuko remembers the way her hands trembled in his.</p><p>“Uncle-” he starts. </p><p>“Yes, Prince Zuko?”</p><p>His father always said Zuko did not have the heart of a firebender. True firebenders are cowed by no one, nor do they yield to their weaknesses. They take what they want, without asking, without remorse. If his father were here, Zuko would have nowhere near the strength to ask. But Iroh is Fire Lord, and Iroh is close to his mother, and Zuko is his mother’s darling. </p><p>“I want you to tell the Fire Sage that he will not be behind the screen in our chambers.” Zuko says. He works hard to keep his words even, his tone oblique, neither demanding nor submissive. Simply a request. He has the right to make requests, he's the Crown Prince, after all.</p><p>He expects his uncle, driven as he is by tradition and proverb, to protest. He is shocked when the man bursts into a gap-toothed smile.<br/><br/>“Of course, Prince Zuko,” the Fire Lord says. “We have changed the world a great deal, what’s a bit more?” Zuko does not like the implication that he is somehow involved in his uncle’s revolutions, but he isn’t exactly uninvolved either. “Just ensure the people have nothing to talk about tomorrow.” Iroh says, and Zuko feels the flame-red flush spreading up his cheeks and down his throat.</p><p>Zuko leaves not knowing whether he has won a victory, or somehow mired himself in yet another defeat.</p><p>_____________________________</p><p>The girl’s hand is clammy in his, the way a snake feels after it's been dead in the hot sun for half a day. The second his honor guard admits them to the bridal suite, she drops him as though stung. The wedding-song is still being sung, he can make out the lyrics if he listens. It’s new, composed especially for him by the Court Poet, under Iroh’s direction. It’s in the traditional meter, but instead of the normal symbolism - an enclosed garden, a firelily, the sun, new images have been substituted - a forest, an oxbow bend in a swift river, twining vines.</p><p>Zuko has always had a head for poetry, much to his father’s pleasure. The only thing he consistently bested Azula at was parsing the meanings behind seemingly plain verse. He is not sure he approves of the epithalamion's message of change, of alteration, of new traditions.</p><p>"Don't be afraid," he tells her. “There is no Fire Sage,” he tells her. “He’s blind drunk, so my uncle excused him.”</p><p>“Is the marriage even legitimate then?” She asks. It’s the first they’ve spoken, and her voice is colder than any blizzard. Zuko shrugs, and pours them both a healthy draught of wine.</p><p>“He’s the Fire Lord. He can do what he wants.” </p><p>_____________________________</p><p>“Look,” he tells her, when they have both drunk enough to make the room spin. “I was supposed to marry Yue, not you. It’s not your fault. I didn’t want to marry you anyway. So I won’t touch you, and in return, you just tell everyone I did.”</p><p>He makes it sound like a fair trade off. He practiced the words into his wine glass all evening. When she disappears behind the folding screen, he smears blood on his side of the bed, and tells himself that Agni will understand. </p><p>_____________________________</p><p>He sleeps bare-chested, and he awakens to find her curled up against him. The nights in the Fire Nation grow cold before dawn, and she emits almost no body heat compared to him. Zuko turns away from her, certain she would be less than thrilled to find herself wrapped around him, were she to awaken. But unconsciously, she follows him, the way a spidersnake will follow the path of the sun on warmed bricks.</p><p>Zuko shuts his eyes, and tells himself it will lend authenticity to their fiction in the morning.</p><p> </p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. Where Little Fears Grow Great</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Zuko’s eyes snap open as the sun crests the horizon, and he awakens to the dry mouth and fuzzy head that always succeeds an evening of excessive wine. He glances at the girl on his left, curled up around herself the way a capycobra curls in hibernation, and he has to restrain himself from sighing.</p><p>It’s not that she’s ugly. In fact, she’s almost too beautiful, with dark, lovely skin and eyes as azure as the sea in the Lazuli Cove. Her hair is dark too, curly and thick in the humidity that suffuses the room, completely unlike the smooth coils of Fire Nation women. It lends her an alien look, it marks her as an outsider. He wonders whether, done up in the traditional styles, the difference will be less obvious. Even if it were, her nose is missing the aristocratic hook of a Fire Nation noble, her face is ovaloid, her chin does not jut out at a severe angle, her body is free of any of the scars that come from improperly mastered fire. Her limbs are long and slender, muscular, but nothing like the expected body of a Fire Lord’s wife. </p><p>Not for the first time, Zuko wonders what message his uncle is trying to communicate by wedding him to a Water Tribe girl.</p><p>He wonders about Princess Yue, whom he was supposed to marry, before his wife’s brother stole her away. </p><p>In the light of day, his decision not to touch her the previous night seems foolish. It’s possible his uncle, if he hears of it, will understand it as a sign of disrespect, and he has seen Iroh breathe fire over a battalion of faithless soldiers. And he can only imagine what Azula would say if she knew that he left his marriage vow unfulfilled. But he can’t exactly change his mind now, and so he hopes the girl is a decent enough liar that she won’t instantly reveal their deception. He eases himself out of bed, dresses silently, and leaves her sleeping.</p><p>_____________________________</p><p>He finds his mother breakfasting alone, beneath a green tegmin tree, and at her gentle smile he bends his head and joins her.</p><p>“How are you today, Zuko?” She asks, and he’s moved by the warmth of her eyes. She looks at him as though he is her entire world, her sun and starlight. His father always preferred Azula’s ruthless cunning to his more straightforward approach, but from his boyhood, he has been his mother’s favorite. And she, his, he thinks, looking at her. When his father was alive, she did not smile so often or so freely.</p><p>“I'm well, Mother,” he says. “And you?”</p><p>“I’m well, my son,” she says. She peers behind him, as though he has hidden his wife in the bushes. “Where is the princess?”</p><p>“Still sleeping,” he says. His mother nods her head sagely, and offers him a cup of steaming tea, which he accepts, along with a piece of sweetbread.</p><p>“General Jeong Jeong brought her from the North Pole, and said she has an even temperament, and is very kind, and quite at home on the sea.”</p><p>“She is Water Tribe,” Zuko says. </p><p>“Perhaps you might go sailing,” his mother suggests. “It might be nice for her to see the coast, and to escape the heat of high summer.”</p><p>“I’m certain that Fire Lord Iroh would not approve of such an excursion,” he says. If he were his uncle, he would not want his heir wandering around the Fire Nation, especially since there’s a band of armed insurrectionists who would jump at the chance to make him their figurehead.</p><p>“Your uncle wants you to be happy.” His mother says. Zuko wonders, as he has for the past ten years, whether she is aware of the complexity of Iroh’s rule, or if she truly sees in his uncle everything that was lacking in Ozai. At least, Zuko thinks grimly, she no longer wears high collars to hide the bruises on her pale skin.</p><p>He thinks of the poverty in the lower city, of the overcrowded schools and the underfunded orphanages, the struggling merchants and the bands of roving thieves. The city has grown safer and more prosperous in the three years that he has been wandering its streets at night, but the Fire Nation has lost a great amount of wealth from the colonies, and the manufacturing sector has struggled to adapt the mechanisms of an efficient war machine into the tools of peacetime.</p><p>His mother tosses the crust of her sweetbread into the pond, and Zuko watches a golden koi, as long as his arm, dart up towards the surface and gulp down her offering.</p><p>_____________________________</p><p>Zuko is stiff in his starch-pressed robes, and a bead of sweat is teetering on his eyelash. Beside him, the Water Tribe girl is dressed in a solid crimson dress, with only a blue bracelet around her wrist, and the bright blue of her eyes, to signify that she is not, cannot, be Fire Nation.</p><p>They are kneeling on golden cushions, and Zuko watches from the corner of his eye, as she pours the lotus seed tea, first for his mother, who drains her cup, and then for his uncle, who bestows a beneficent smile upon the girl. Zuko cannot help the uncomfortable itch in his palms, and he tries desperately not to glance up, at the empty seat beside his mother, where his father ought to sit, or across from his uncle, where the girl’s parents should be drinking tea as well. But she has come alone, without family or friend, all the way from the North Pole, and he is discomforted by her lack of connections. He should receive a ring and a brooch from her father, not bend his head reverentially to an empty seat.</p><p>If his uncle feels slighted at the absence of the girl’s kinsmen, he does not show it on his face.</p><p>With the tea drunk, Zuko’s mother touches the girl’s forehead, and whispers a blessing into her ear. Iroh, as Zuko’s only living male relative, does the same, and his words cause her to smile. His uncle has always been charming. Zuko realizes that he does not even know her father’s name, and he wonders why she has been sent to him alone. Is her tribe so hateful towards the Fire Nation that they will not cross its borders, even to see their chieftain’s daughter wed? Is her cowardly brother, who stole Zuko’s first bride and nearly broke the New Peace, so callous towards his own sister that he would allow her to enter marriage alone, without the comfort of a single familiar face?</p><p>She glances at him, and he tries to quirk his lips upwards in a gentle smile.</p><p>_____________________________</p><p>Zuko and the girl kneel before his father’s grave. They are both clad in white, and the contrast against her dark skin is sharp and lovely. With her slender right hand in his left, they pour out clear water and rice wine and liquid myrrh, and Zuko, mimicking piety, bends his head to the earth and presses his hands into the luxurious green grass.</p><p>“Do you miss him?” She asks. It’s utterly inappropriate to talk during this ceremony, but the observers are at the edge of the clearing, and cannot hear them. He realizes it’s the first time she’s spoken without being spoken to, and she actually manages to meet his eyes. Her gaze is clear, and much of yesterday’s raw terror has faded.</p><p>“He always favored Azula, my sister,” Zuko says. Azula has been conspicuously absent, and he expects she’s off with her friends, causing mischief and tormenting the palace staff, as usual. She'll get a lecture from Iroh about duties and responsibilities, and he does not envy her that.</p><p>“Not an answer,” she says. He sighs, considers reprimanding her for breaking the sacred silence, and decides against it.</p><p>“Sometimes,” he says. “And sometimes not. He wouldn’t approve of this, of my uncle, of our wedding.”</p><p>Her mother has no grave, her body was tossed into the ocean and consumed by a blackfish, or so he’s heard. So instead, they kneel again beneath a white-flowered sakaki tree, and offer the same grave-gifts. Her grip on his hand tightens, and he feels the familiar stab of guilt. He would be wretched if he lost his mother. The clear water spills onto the ground, the rice wine mixes with it and raises its bitter odor, the liquid myrrh is pungent, and stings his nose.</p><p>“I’m sorry,” he says, and when she glances at him, he sees a single tear sparkling in her eye.</p><p>“My mother wouldn’t approve of this wedding either,” the girl says, and Zuko drops his gaze, and focuses on the way a white bead of myrrh makes its way down the stem of a single blade of grass, into the rich brown earth. </p><p>_____________________________</p><p>She is dressed in silver, and he in pure gold. The fabric is woven with golden threads, and, just like his wedding cloak, it displays the motif of twining vines and bright flowers. Her face is painted pure white, in the traditional style, and her eyes are outlined in black and rose. His own face is heavily made up, his scar all but hidden by the stiff white mask. They stand at arm’s length, stiff and formal, as the court painter drafts their likeness onto a scroll, as the citizens of Caldera City file past, bowing deeply to the Fire Lord, and bending at the waists to Zuko and his wife. In her hair, the pin signifying her as the Crown Princess glimmers like the moon on a dark ocean.</p><p>The wedding gifts are piled at their feet, the traditional offerings of lychee nuts and lotus seeds, as well as more ornamental presents, whalebone combs, golden necklaces, pearl rings, embroidered fabric, seedlings of rare trees, promises of swift ostrich-horses, a lifetime invitation to all Ember Island Players productions (Zuko almost cannot suppress his groan at the memory of their dreadful rendition of <em>Love Amongst the Dragons</em>), and bouquets of vibrant flowers.</p><p>They have stood for almost four hours in the sunlight slanting through the high window, and Zuko can feel the thick makeup melting off his face, when the final few well-wishers are admitted by the guards. Iroh and his mother have gone to see about dinner preparations, and the hall is mostly empty. The four guards disappear to secure the palace doors.</p><p>The final man bows a touch too low, and Zuko cannot help the sudden feeling that something is wrong.</p><p>“General Zhao sends his regards, Prince Zuko.” The man states, and Zuko, realizing the man’s intent, attempts to fling out his arm and intercept the flame headed for his new wife, but he knows before he moves that he is too late, that the girl is going to perish horribly, screaming and covered in burns. Zuko knows the sting of fire, he shouts, he forces himself, in the milliseconds that feel like hours, to shove the assassin aside, and then he feels the humid air turn as dry as a desert, and he swivels, expecting to meet another burst of fire head-on. He waits to hear the girl cry out, feels the guilt already twisting in his stomach, feels the agony of the inviolate vow he swore to her breaking (this has to be a new record, a marriage vow broken in less than a day)-</p><p>but he finds his eyes following a stream of swiftly congealing water, and when he spins round, he realizes that Katara has parted the fire with a roiling wave, and frozen the firebender in his tracks. His heart, if possible, sinks further into his stomach.</p><p>“You’re a waterbender,” he says. She raises her eyebrow at him, and he flushes at his idiotic reaction. His uncle always did say he has a penchant for stating the obvious. “Let him go,” he says.</p><p>“Are you insane?” She asks, and her voice is as cold as ice.</p><p>“Not last I checked,” he says. “But the guards will be back any minute, and unless you feel like explaining this,” he gestures to her stance, and the ice she has formed around her. “You’ll let me get rid of him.”</p><p>“You’re going to kill him?” She asks, and he doesn’t answer. He waits for the ice to melt, and when it remains stubbornly frozen, he gapes at her.</p><p>“You’re disobeying me? You can’t disobey me, you’re my wife!” She gives him a withering look, as though the concept of domestic harmony has never even occurred to her.</p><p>“You can’t kill him,” she says.</p><p>“He tried to kill you!”</p><p>“Believe me, if I killed every Fire Nation asshole who’s tried to kill me, you wouldn’t have an army!” Before he can ponder these words, he hears the clank of heavy boots, and he faces the door, expecting the guards to see him standing beside the waterbender and raise the cry of alarm, but the look of shock on their faces tells him otherwise.</p><p>The would-be assassin, Zhao’s man, groans.</p><p>“Crown Prince!” One of them bursts out. “What happened?”</p><p>“Um-” he says. The floor is wet, his robes are soaked, and he knows if he takes a step, his black suede boots will make a sloshing sound.</p><p>“That horrible man tried to attack me,” Katara says. Her voice is honey-sweet, completely innocent. “Prince Zuko saved my life.” And she promptly bursts into tears, which are at least as convincing as any Ember Island Player's.</p><p>“We’ll take him to your uncle at once, Crown Prince,” the guard says. “And we will escort you both to your chambers until we can assess the severity of the threat.”</p><p>_____________________________</p><p>“Why aren’t you going to tell your uncle what I am?” Katara asks. Zuko shrugs. </p><p>“We’ve ended our campaign against the waterbenders,” he says. “It’s not relevant information.”</p><p>“You seemed pretty concerned that they would find me-”</p><p>“Look,” Zuko says. “I’m supposed to protect you, that’s my vow as your husband. If you hadn’t moved so swiftly, you’d probably be dying in agony from a fireball right now. So the way I see it, you saved yourself by waterbending, and I’ll save you from the anger my uncle would feel about being deceived by pretending I didn’t see anything. Just this once. So we’re equal.”</p><p>Katara looks at him, then shakes her head as though he has said something incredibly stupid. He pulls off his ruined boots, and wonders whether he has any hope at all of salvaging them. </p><p> </p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. Uncle-Father and Aunt-Mother Are Deceived</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Iroh himself comes to Zuko and Katara, and when he flings Zuko’s door open, Zuko rises. He’s not sure what he’s expecting, an interrogation, perhaps, but instead, his uncle, short and balding with long white hair which falls in whisps around his eyes, sweeps him up in a warm embrace, and in a tone thick with tears, says,</p><p>“Prince Zuko, are you okay?”</p><p>“I’m fine, Uncle,” he says. He can feel himself flushing, and he can feel the waterbender watching this interaction with amusement. He’s convinced that she must be laughing at him, there aren’t many princes whose uncles feel the need to bundle them up in their arms as though they were a laprabbit in need of a cuddle. </p><p>“I’m so sorry,” Iroh says, and Zuko has a sudden flash of understanding, the kind that he assumes occur continually to Azula, but which are only infrequent for him. His uncle has made it impossible for Zhao to hold Zuko up as the true Fire Lord. Just as his uncle’s rule has been tainted by the murder of Ozai, so Zuko’s will be, always and forever, by his marriage outside his clan, to an alien, a stranger, a waterbender. Zuko has become one of Iroh’s flowering vines, one of his verdant new shoots. He’s become a symbol, not for Zhao’s claim, but for Iroh’s.</p><p>“It’s Princess Katara he wanted,” Zuko says with a slight shrug.</p><p>“And you rescued her like a gallant hero,” Iroh says, with sparkling eyes.</p><p>“Yeah,” Zuko says. The lie, and his own insufficiently, lodge bitterly in his throat. “Something like that.”</p><p>“I’m very sorry you had such a harsh welcome to the Fire Nation, Princess Katara,” Iroh says. “I promise you, this incident does not reflect our people. Once you and Prince Zuko go on your tour of the villages, you will see that you are very much beloved.”</p><p>“Thank you, Fire Lord,” she murmurs. Zuko realizes he has not told her about the upcoming tour, and he’s grateful to her for concealing her ignorance. He realizes she probably does not have a maidservant or a tutor or an assistant yet, and that he should ensure she has dresses and robes and whatever other things women need. At least he had the opportunity to write a few letters to Princess Yue, he knows that she likes spring weather, and has a fondness for bright colors, and that her favorite dinner is fermented tigershark in a legume broth. All he knows of Katara is that she was willing to shoulder the burden of her brother's selfishness, and that her mother was slaughtered by a Fire Nation warrior.</p><p>“You should both come for tea,” the Fire Lord says. </p><p>“Uncle, I’m sure there’s not time for the Fire Lord to be-”</p><p>“Nonsense, Prince Zuko,” Iroh interrupts. “There is always time for a good cup of tea, and a good conversation among friends. Come to the lily garden early tomorrow morning.”</p><p>“We will, Fire Lord,” Katara says.</p><p>“And Princess Katara,” Iroh says. “I hope you will do me the honor of calling me Uncle. You are a member of our family now. I am sorry you had to experience the cruelty of Zhao, but I assure you you will be more closely guarded in the future.”</p><p>“Thank you,” Katara says.  She smiles at Iroh, openly, freely, as though he were just a pleasant old man, and not a lord who murdered his brother in order to take back his throne.</p><p>_____________________________</p><p>“My uncle is quite particular about his tea,” Zuko says. They are sitting cross-legged on the floor before his empty fireplace, having eaten their dinner alone, locked behind closed doors and guarded by a small army. They are both edging towards inebriation, and she is, if not entirely comfortable with him, less anxious than she was the previous night. “He likes everyone to follow custom and tradition.”</p><p>“It’s tea.” She says. “You drink it to be warm.”</p><p>“It’s always warm in the Fire Nation,” he says. “And drinking tea is part of our religion. You have to learn the ceremonies, how to brew, how to pour, and how and when and what to drink.”</p><p>“I know how to pour tea.”</p><p>“I saw you pouring for my mother today,” he says. “You don’t.” She frowns at him, and he waves his hand.</p><p>“It’s not your fault. Yue had a tutor to teach her everything she’d need to know, and you’ll have one too, once you’re settled. But I’ll show you.” He stands, and he draws her up to stand beside him. “My uncle will expect us, once we’ve bowed to him, (he demonstrates the appropriate depth of the bow, and she mimics him), to turn to the scroll and flowers that he will have set up on his shrine to Agni. The scroll will contain a traditional poem, and will establish the tone of our meeting, and the flowers will communicate a specific wish or desire. Then, my uncle will gesture for us to be seated, and we will kneel, to show him respect, while he sits cross-legged.” </p><p>They kneel again, and Zuko picks up the half-empty bottle of wine, and holds it in his hand.</p><p>“You’ll be offered a sweetcake, and you’ll need to offer half to me, and then eat half yourself. My uncle will pour the tea for us, and he and I will discuss a theme or image in the poem. If he addresses you directly, don’t offer any compliments, but instead ask questions. And since you’re my wife, it’s likely that you’ll be asked to pour the second cup. When you do that, pour so your wrists are not exposed. Your sleeve revealed half your arm to my mother earlier today, which is considered seductive and inappropriate.”</p><p>“That’s a lot of rules,” she says. He shrugs, slightly.</p><p>“You stop noticing them after a while. Here, pour my wine for me.” He passes her the bottle, and she holds it delicately, and then, with the grace of one trained from childhood in bending, she pours, and her wrists remain covered by the red fabric of her dress. Her gestures are smooth, and he’s about to compliment her when her hand slips and she slips and pours wine over his hand, drenching his silk robes.</p><p>“Tui, sorry!” She gasps. “Maybe I’ve had more to drink than I thought.” He cannot help the feeling of irritation that flashes through him. It’s not her fault, he knows, but he was supposed to marry a girl who was at least somewhat capable of filling the role of Fire Princess. But Katara twists her hands, and the wine leeches out of his robes, and floats in a thin stream back into his cup. Apart from her display earlier, he hasn’t seen waterbending before, and he’s only observed earthbending from a distance. He’s struck by the naturalness of her gestures, her obvious mastery. He imagines that, unlike his own training, she mastered her forms with ease.</p><p>“Maybe don’t do that tomorrow,” he says, and she laughs. Her laugh twists his heart, because it makes her appear much younger than her nineteen years. Her teeth are white and gleaming, and her eyes scrunch up, and a dimple shows on her right cheek, and he reminds himself that she was not supposed to marry him either. No doubt she would rather be anywhere else than the empire of the man who savaged her mother. She presses her cup to her lips, and Zuko finds himself watching the way her throat bobs when she swallows, and the way her loose hair frames her face, before he pulls himself together and drags his gaze away. </p><p>_____________________________</p><p>Zuko has decided he does not enjoy sharing his bed with the waterbender, not at all. </p><p>He enjoys his privacy, his personal freedom. There’s a reason why, when he’s infrequently found himself drawn to a friendly girl, he’s refused to lead her back to his room. He likes to have a way out, and he cannot exactly leave when there’s a girl clad in yellow silk drooling on his pillows, or sprawling across half his bed, or curled  up to him as though he were nothing more than a fire-warmed riverstone designed for her comfort. He doesn’t like the way that, in her sleep, she draws towards him, like she’s used to sleeping out of doors, and fears the chill before dawn.</p><p>She presses herself against him, and his body, ever treacherous, responds. He flushes, and feels the air around him heat in response, and she draws even closer. He thinks of his mask, hidden in a loose brick in the garden wall, and he pulls himself from bed, and dresses quietly, careful not to wake her.</p><p>_____________________________</p><p>“You have such excellent manners, Princess Katara,” his uncle says, and Katara glances at him with a half-smile. </p><p>“Thank you, Fire Lord,” she demurs, and dips her head at the appropriate angle.</p><p>“Uncle, please,” he says, and she gives him a quick, questioning look, and he nods his head slightly.</p><p>“Uncle, then,” she says. “I’m honored you would take the time to host such a lovely ceremony for us.”</p><p>“It is my deepest wish to welcome you to our family,” Iroh says. “I invited the Princess Azula, but unfortunately it appears she is too occupied to join the festivities.”</p><p>“My sister is driven,” Zuko explains. “She’s one of the youngest master firebenders in history.” He sees Katara’s eyes quirk slightly, and he feels the shame that always tinges his thoughts of Azula. He was granted status as a master firebender only four years ago, four years after Azula. </p><p>“Hopefully you will have a chance to get to know her,” Iroh says. “I will encourage her to welcome you into our household.”</p><p>“I would be honored,” Katara says, and she sips her tea. The cup in Zuko’s hands in piping hot, and he finds himself wondering, as he often does, how different his life would be if Lu Ten had not perished, if his father had not killed Azulon, if his mother had not fled the Fire Nation and brought himself and his sister to his uncle, if his uncle had not chosen to march his army into Caldera City, and seize the throne from his usurping brother. Perhaps Azula, so vicious and violent, would be more mellow and moderate.</p><p>Zuko remembers her at nine, dueling and besting warriors double her age, and wonders if Ozai living would have made any difference at all.</p><p>“Do you have a sister, Princess Katara?” Iroh asks. She stiffens slightly, and takes another sip of her tea.</p><p>“No, only a brother, Uncle.”</p><p>“You are a fine sister for being willing to ensure the New Peace between our peoples is kept, despite your brother’s indiscretion.” Iroh says, and Zuko sees a flash of something wretched cross her face, before she smooths her features into polite interest.</p><p>“Sokka and I were always close,” she says. “I’m simply grateful that you were willing to extend the same treaty for my hand as for Yue’s.”</p><p>_____________________________</p><p>The next day, Iroh deems the city to be safe, and Zuko and Katara are dressed once again in gold and silver, and, seated on an ornate cedar palanquin, they are brought out into the city to be seen by the people. The sun glares down oppressively from its zenith, and Zuko is sweating beneath his heavy formal robes.</p><p>“I would rather walk,” Katara says, and Zuko thinks of the streets at night, narrow and winding and often perilous.</p><p>“It’s safer this way,” he says. “My uncle has made great strides in ensuring prosperity for the Fire Nation, but many are still furious at him for ending the war and withdrawing from the siege of Ba Sing Se. It’s difficult for a country to shift from war to peace, and we’ve had a bad few years of famine.”</p><p>“Very difficult,” she says, and he remembers that her village was often attacked by the Southern Raiders, and that she grew up in extreme deprivation. The golden necklace around his throat, and the gold brooch above his heart, and the gold pin in his hair, stand as accusations against him.</p><p>“Where is Azula?” He says, when porters lift up the palanquin to follow after Iroh. She is supposed to ride behind them, dressed all in red except for her Earth Nation betrothal bracelet, but her palanquin remains empty. “My uncle will be furious if she misses another important event.” Katara does not answer, and when they pass beneath the portico and into the streets of thronging Fire Nation citizens, he puts his question from his mind. He smiles broadly, and raises his hand in a gesture of benediction, and at set intervals joins his arm with the waterbender’s. He is aware that, when Azulon used to parade through the streets, the response was much more enthusiastic. He remembers the day Azula was first brought out, when all the city gathered to gape at the girl delivered on the midsummer solstice, destined for greatness by blood and birthright. Zuko’s ears had rung for days afterwards. His father had always said Azula was born lucky.</p><p>The marriage of the Crown Prince should elicit more excitement than the birth of a second son’s second child, but there are few hoarse-throated cries of excitement. The people watch, they acknowledge him when he waves, but their interest seems largely muted.</p><p>“Do they hate me?” Katara asks, softly.</p><p>“Not just you,” he responds.</p><p>_____________________________</p><p>“Prince Zuko, where is your sister?” Iroh asks over dinner, when Azula’s place is once again conspicuously empty. Zuko can tell he is furious, but he doubts Katara can read the slight signs of anger etched into his uncle’s forehead.</p><p>“Believe me, Uncle, if I knew you would know,” he says. “I haven’t seen her since before my wedding.”</p><p>“The girl is entirely too self-centered,” Iroh says, and Zuko’s mother nods. Zuko thinks of his sister’s mocking proclamation that his father was going to kill him, to prove to Azulon that he was strong enough to seize the throne, but he holds in his mind too the time he found her crying in the gardens on the anniversary of their father’s death. “Fetch Princess Azula at once,” Iroh orders one of the guards, who bows and vanishes into the cavernous depths of the palace.</p><p>_____________________________</p><p>“What do you mean she’s gone?” Ursa asks, her voice soft and trembling. In the back of Zuko’s mind, he hears a distant cracking, like a glacier in springtime as it begins to calf.</p><p>“She’s vanished, disappeared without a trace,” Iroh says, his voice grim. “All that’s left behind is an Earth Kingdom cloak and a letter.” He holds them up, and Zuko frowns.</p><p>“Azula got kidnapped by earthbenders? She’s the most talented bender in our generation, she could fry anyone with white lightning, let alone some rock pushers.”</p><p>“The letter says she’s been taken on the orders of King Kuei,” Iroh says.</p><p>“King Kuei?” Katara bursts out, and Zuko glances at her.</p><p>“He’s the king of Ba Sing Se,” Ursa explains, and Katara nods.</p><p>“I know, I’ve met him, I don’t think he’d kidnap anyone.”</p><p>“When did you meet the Earth King?” Zuko asks, incredulous, and Iroh holds up his hands.</p><p>“This conversation is pointless. It’s evident that Azula is gone, and it appears that the Earth King has conducted this act of aggression against the Fire Nation. I have already written a letter demanding an answer, and General Jeong Jeong will lead a contingent of forces to Ba Sing Se and conduct a thorough search.”</p><p>“Shouldn’t we alert the army and inform the our people?” Zuko asks. Iroh’s face is worn, his expression weary, and Zuko cannot help the stab of pity that flickers through him and then vanishes. Since Lu Ten’s death, his uncle has fought one battle after another, has suffered countless defeats and only a few costly victories. </p><p>“And tell the nation one of Ozai’s heirs is missing? No, if the palace is known to be pregnable then we are all in danger. We must do this secretly, silently, we must pretend nothing is wrong. I do not believe Kuei has a good reason for stealing Azula, I think there is something else happening. The less we tell the world of this, the better. You and Katara will ride into the farmlands tomorrow and bless the summer wheat. We will say that Azula has fallen ill, until we find her. I do not believe King Kuei would have kidnapped her.”</p><p>“And if he has taken her?” Zuko imagines his sister, powerful, certainly, but still young, scarcely nineteen, for all her bluster still occasionally an insecure child, trapped in some prison of rock and metal in the unconquerable city of Ba Sing Se.</p><p>“We’ll take her back,” Iroh says, but his voice lacks all conviction. Zuko knows that if she has, in fact, been seized by the Earth Kingdom, the Fire Nation’s depleted army, half disbanded, and half engaged in internecine war against General Zhao, will never manage to defeat King Kuei.</p><p>_____________________________</p><p>“I know King Kuei,” Katara says, as they lie next to each other in the dark. “He’s awkward and kind and completely disinterested in politics. He wouldn’t take your sister.”</p><p>“I know my sister,” Zuko says. “She’s the most powerful bender I know, except for my uncle. I don’t know how anyone could take her.”</p><p>“I’m sorry,” Katara says. “I hope she’ll be found soon.”</p><p>But Zuko harbors no such hope. He wonders when last she was in the palace, whether she truly has been missing since his wedding, what her life must have been like, if she can vanish for days without being noticed, without anyone wondering where she was. Zuko scarcely goes a morning without breakfasting with his mother.</p><p>His father always favored his daughter. His mother always favored her son. Zuko mulls over his sister’s absence, probing at it like an abscessed tooth. When the dawn comes, he rises and works through his bending forms, cultivating the fire that glows in the center of his soul.</p>
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<a name="section0004"><h2>4. Like Two Stars Started From Their Spheres</h2></a>
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    <p>The blessing of the crops takes place along the boundary between Caldera City and the farmlands. It is an important part of the summer ceremonies, but the ritual, which requires a married prince and princess of the royal family,  has not been performed since Ozai’s death. Zuko repeats his uncle’s instructions to himself as he and Katara dig small holes facing each of the cardinal directions, and mix fresh mulesteer blood, clear water, fertilized eggs, and winter wheat with a drop of blood from their own fingers, and a strand of hair from their own heads. Zuko speaks in the old language, and calls down blessings from Agni, while Katara murmurs a hastily memorized prayer for the needed rain, her words flowing together in a way that indicates her unfamiliarity with the tongue. </p><p>When the incantation is spoken, Zuko ignites a fire and burns the offerings to ash. They begin in the south, and then walk shod to the north, then walk barefoot to the east, and finally end in the west, stripped of all but their underclothes, their hair loose, holding hands. Zuko thinks it would be a pleasant task, if only he loved the woman who walked beside him. He has vague memories of his uncle and aunt returning from the ceremony, sun-flushed and merry, entirely alive. As it stands, he averts his eyes from Katara, and she does not look at him.</p><p>He finds himself wondering if they are profaning the ritual, since they are not truly wed, since their marriage remains unconsummated. His uncle would know, but asking his uncle would mean admitting a dereliction of duty, and he does not have the heart to stomach Iroh’s disappointment.</p><p>They are both sweating profusely when they finish, and his throat is parched from the hot sun. </p><p>There are none to watch this sacred ritual, so Katara draws water from the humid air, and fills the flask that formerly carried the sacred clear water. She drinks deeply, and offers it to him, and he swallows it gratefully. His thoughts shift towards Azula, and the gnawing worry in his stomach, assuaged by easy labor and religion, returns with a vengeance.</p><p>He turns to find Katara watching him.</p><p>“What?” He asks, and then flinches at the harshness of his tone.</p><p>“Nothing,” she says. “It’s just-”</p><p>“Just what?”</p><p>“We didn’t have religion like this when I was a child. Until I traveled to the North Pole, I knew almost nothing about my tribe’s spirits, all I knew was that the moon was the first waterbender.” Zuko ponders the weight of her words, and finds his tongue leaden.</p><p>“At least you know now,” he says, and he sees her mouth tighten into a thin line, and he feels a hot surge of embarrassment at having said the wrong thing, as always.</p><p>“Yes,” she says, bitterly. “At least I know now.” She turns away from him, and he wants to kick himself for how insensitive he sounds.</p><p>“If there’s something you do-” he starts. “If there’s a ceremony your people do for marriage, if you’d like, I’d be willing. If you wanted to be blessed by an elder, or spend a day on a glacier, or-”</p><p>“Marriage in the Southern Water Tribe is legitimate only after the birth of the first child,” she says. “If a man and a woman are proven incapable of having offspring, they cannot remain together.”</p><p>“That’s like ancient Fire Nation blood purity practices,” he says with a laugh. “It’s a little barbaric, don’t you think?” She scuffs her foot against the ground, her face an impenetrable mask.</p><p>“It’s a recent practice for us,” she says. “Most of our people were slaughtered, we can’t afford to let two who might otherwise bear children remain infertile. I suppose we all come to barbarism by different routes.” And once again, he feels as though he has struck her. He wonders what she thinks of the New Peace. He had always assumed the other nations would receive the end of the war with gratitude, secure in the certainty that their nations would survive. He had assumed they would be eager to trade and make treaties and relax the defense of their high walls and large territories. But he ponders the bitterness in her words, ponders the necessity that has forced such cruelty onto her tribe, and he wonders whether the world mightn’t see Iroh’s New Peace as just another insidious brand of warfare.</p><p>Maybe King Kuei truly did kidnap Azula.</p><p>_____________________________</p><p>Lunch is strained and silent that afternoon. Katara sits beside him and picks at her food, seeming reticent to eat anything except the occasional mouthful of dragonfruit. She is sweating in her yellow silk. Iroh is impatient, in one of his rare bad humors, and he scowls into his dish of jizoi dumplings and does not make conversation. Ursa, across from Zuko, is morose and silent, and Zuko sees from the redness around her eyes that she has been crying.</p><p>“Is there any news of the Princess Azula, Uncle?” Katara asks, breaking the terse silence, and Zuko cannot help but gape at her for daring to interrupt Iroh’s thoughts.</p><p>“There is not,” Iroh says, his voice heavy, but his tone polite.</p><p>“I’m sorry,” she says.</p><p>“Our family has had bad luck with abductions this year,” he says, and settles the matter. Silence draws across the table like a shroud, and Zuko tries desperately to chew quietly.</p><p>“Earthbenders will be impossible to track through checkpoints,” Katara says. “But no one gets into Ba Sing Se without the knowledge of the Earth King. I know Kuei, if you write to him-”</p><p>“Prince Zuko,” Iroh says, and his voice is frigid. “Control your wife.”</p><p>“Princess Katara,” Zuko says, softly. At his side, she stiffens. “The Fire Lord is more than capable of arranging the search for my sister.”</p><p>“Men are often not what they seem, my dear,” Ursa says, softly. “I too have exchanged letters with Kuei, but the machinations of those in power-”</p><p>“But,” Katara interrupts, and Iroh glances at Zuko, the command in his eyes evident. He rises, and holds out his hand to his wife.</p><p>“Come,” he says. She remains seated. “Katara,” he says, more softly. She meets his eyes, and in their watery depths he sees in palimpsest his mother’s bruised body, the fingerprints on her arms, the sleepless shadows on her face, the little burns that flickered on her palms. “Please,” he say, in a voice barely above a whisper. To his relief, she rises, and bows to his uncle, and takes his arm.</p><p>_____________________________</p><p>“I know Kuei,” she says. “I’ve met him, I’ve seen inside his city. He’s scholarly and cowardly and obsessed with his menagerie. He wouldn’t take your sister.”</p><p>“I don’t believe she was taken,” Zuko says. They are sitting before a pond, and he watches her, unthinking, trail her hand through the water. The ripples chase her just a hint too quickly to be entirely natural. He does not know why he is telling a stranger this, an outsider, an alien. Perhaps because his mother and his uncle have the same suspicions, but will not dare to share them. “Azula has always resented Iroh for murdering our father, and she has never expressed an interest in the New Peace. I do not believe anyone could take her against her will.”</p><p>“So where do you think she is, then?” Katara asks. Zuko sighs.</p><p>“Where I would be, probably, if I was a better bender, or a better son. General Zhao’s army.”</p><p>“What does Zhao have to gain from Azula?” Katara asks.</p><p>“She’s Ozai’s child, and Ozai was murdered by my uncle, after he was crowned as Fire Lord. My uncle gained good will and legitimacy by making me his heir, but his rule is tenuous at best, and if Zhao and Azula make the claim that Iroh’s rule is unlawful, they’ll have a powerful tradition's weight behind them.”</p><p>“Especially with you wed to a waterbender,” she says, and he dips his head. “So then,” she says. “Why would Zhao try to kill me?”</p><p>“Perhaps to draw the other nations into the war?” Zuko suggests. “It’s been a five year conflict, and little progress has been made on either side. The Fire Nation’s colonies support Iroh, the Fire Nation itself, in its more urban areas, tacitly supports Zhao, and in the rural areas, the soldiers terrorize the provincials and start skirmishes and disrupt supply chains and murder at will. If you were to die here, do you think your father would accept the excuse of an assassin? Zhao might convince him to side against Iroh.”</p><p>“What does your uncle want?” She asks.</p><p>“Peace, he says,” Zuko responds. She flicks her fingers through the water, and he watches the shimmering liquid climb up over her hands. He looks around, but the garden is deserted.</p><p>“And if I had not taken Yue’s place, what then?” She asks. “Would you have sent your black ships to the North Pole and torn down the great walls and demanded recompense from another girl’s body?”</p><p>“You did take Yue’s place,” Zuko says. “So there’s nothing to worry about. The treaty stands.”</p><p>“Zuko,” she says. Only his mother calls him Zuko, his name on her tongue discomforts him. He is Zuzu to Azula, he is a prince to his uncle, his father, when alive, rarely addressed him at all. “You can’t hide from what your nation did, and you can’t ignore what your people are doing now.”</p><p>“You’re a peasant,” he says. “You’re a commoner, you’re here by luck and because of your idiot brother’s idiot cock. You don't belong here, so stop acting as though you do. Know your place."</p><p>“I’m a better bender than you are,” she says, cooly. “You and all your royal blood can’t compare to me. I’ve heard the stories, everyone has, about the prince who couldn’t light a fire, with or without a flint, till he was almost seven. I lifted the ocean when I was two.” He leaps upright, feeling the rage blossom inside of him, feeling the hidden flame in his chest burst into fire. He thinks of his mother, remembers her sorrow, dwells on the way she cringed from Ozai’s shadow. “What are you going to do?” She asks. “Burn me, like your father burnt you?”</p><p>“We’re going to the theatre this evening,” he says, stiffly. He can smell the smoke peeling off his palms, he can feel the heat roiling in his stomach. His palms itch to become living fire. “They’ll dedicate the show to us, and we’ll be expected to kiss.”</p><p>_____________________________</p><p>He finds his uncle sitting before a great window, staring into nothingness. His uncle’s face is slack and weary, and he seems much older than his sixty years. Zuko scuffs his foot against the stone floor, and his uncle turns and looks upon him with something close to hopelessness.</p><p>“Fire Lord,” Zuko says. “The messenger said-”</p><p>“Forgive me my anger, Zuko,” Iroh says, and for the second time that day, Zuko cringes at the unexpected familiarity.</p><p>“I-”</p><p>“I spoke harshly to your wife, and I intend to apologize to her, but I want you to know that I regret it.” Zuko considers his own outburst, and sighs. “Sit beside me,” his uncle says, and as he did a hundred times when he was young, Zuko scrambles up onto the window ledge, and presses his good eye to the glass, and looks out. He can feel heat radiating off his uncle, and when he brushes his leg against Iroh’s, he jerks away in shock at the man’s temperature. He might as well have pressed his hand against an iron stove.</p><p>“I spoke harshly to her too,” Zuko admits, and the guilt welling in his stomach lessens, slightly.</p><p>“When you are fire,” Iroh says. “It can be difficult to remember that moderation is a virtue. Fire seeks to consume, both what is evil and what is good. We must master ourselves to master others.”</p><p>“Fire Lord-” Zuko says.</p><p>“Zuko, every day for the past five years, I have regretted what I did. I killed my own brother, my own blood, the boy who used to trail in my wake and mimic me, the one I loved more than my own mother, the one I held as equal to my father. And I look at you, and I imagine that maybe it was worth it, maybe what I did can be justified, that maybe my action was better than my inaction. But Azula has become Ozai, and I know that you do not want to be me. So if you would go to her, then go.”</p><p>“Fire Lord-” Zuko says, the hair on the back of his neck prickling.</p><p>“I know your marriage is unconsummated,” Iroh says. Zuko feels a bone-deep flush. </p><p>“We didn’t- How did you-”</p><p>“I see through you, Zuko, just as I see through Azula. I feared this day would come, and yet I thought I could avert it. I can annul your marriage, send the girl back to her polar wasteland, and you can have my crown. You can fight me for it if you want, if you think that will make it easier. But waging war against Zhao is bad enough, I will not fight Azula too, let alone you. I cannot.”</p><p>“But the New Peace-” Zuko begins, and Iroh laughs.</p><p>“Perhaps I was a fool to think there could be peace or harmony in the world. I’m not the Avatar, who am I to make balance? You’ve seen the city, you’ve seen the poverty, you’ve seen the crime. I know you skulk the streets at night in your blue mask, I know you watch my soldiers torment women, girls, old men too weak to fight them, I know that everything I planned and hoped for has become ashes in my hands.” Zuko sees his uncle is clutching an image, a picture of Lu Ten, and he feels his heart twist.</p><p>“Uncle-” he says. </p><p>“I did this for love of you, Zuko,” his uncle says, and Zuko watches as coils of smoke begin to rise from Lu Ten’s picture. “I could not let your father kill you,” his uncle says, on the verge of tears, and Zuko embraces him, wraps his father’s murderer up in his arms, just as Iroh used to hold him. His hands burn as though he has plunged them into boiling water.</p><p>“Is Azula with Zhao then?”</p><p>“She was seen armed and armored in the eastern campaign field,” Iroh says. Zuko considers this. “Will you go to her?” Iroh asks.</p><p>“I ought to,” Zuko says. Iroh sighs, and Zuko feels a tear, hotter than a drop of burning water, splash onto his hand. “I’ll go tomorrow. Once I’ve said goodbye to my mother, and once you release me from my marriage.”</p><p>_____________________________</p><p>When he takes Katara’s hand in his, and presses his lips to hers, and hears the half-hearted cheer rise around them and turn, gradually, into a proper round of applause, Zuko cannot help but picture his uncle’s mournful face. The girl’s lips are soft against his own, she draws herself closer to him, and when he pulls her into him, he all but cuts his hand open on the rubies sewn into her gown. When at last they break apart, her face is flushed, and he looks away, imagining how she will respond when Iroh separates them in the morning. Probably she will leap for joy, and board the first ship sailing south.</p><p>The theatre is large and well-proportioned, designed to seat one thousand, and when the lights dip and the stage is illuminated, the narrator’s voice rips across the audience.</p><p> “A long time ago, two families, a mountain clan, and a valley clan, held equal sway over a prosperous village, and for many years they lived in peace. The villagers dressed in gold and jade, and all grew rich and fat and happy, and bonds of friendship and unity ensured a lasting tranquility, and for many years, not a drop of blood was spilled. At that time, there were not even weapons in the world, and death was a welcome friend who came after many hundreds of years to release the ready into the spirit world.</p><p>“In fact, the village was so peaceful that the water-spirit, Lach, came to meet with the fire-spirit, Agni, and for many years they dwelled together, between the mountain clan and the valley clan, and  blessed the people of the village, until it became the very center of the world. And to show their thanks for peace, and their love for the people, Lach promised to grant one wish to a member of the valley-clan, and Agni promised to grant one wish to the mountain-clan.</p><p> “San Lee was the middle son of the mountain-clan, and one day he went to Agni, and he demanded that Agni grant his wish. He loved Orahama of the valley-clan, and was engaged to marry her, but she loved his older brother, Na Jan, and she refused to even look at him. San Lee asked Agni to remove Na Jan from Orahama’s affections.</p><p> “But at the same time, Orahama came to the water-spirit Lach, and with tears in her eyes told of her fondness for Na Jan, and she begged to be granted her wish. She asked that she be placed first in Na Jan’s affections.</p><p> “And so the spirits endeavored to fulfill the two contrary wishes. San Lee and Na Jan began arguing bitterly, and for weeks caused turmoil and chaos in the mountain-clan household, and one day, San Lee challenged Na Jan to an Agni Kai. When Orahama heard of this, she raced up the mountain from the village, and came upon the two brothers, both master benders, and she stepped between them, violating the sacred laws of the Agni Kai. Both brothers struck her down with white lightning, and she fell into a heap of ash.</p><p> “And the valley-clan was so furious with the mountain-clan that they gathered up their scythes, newly sharpened for the harvest, and wrapped themselves in the protective essence of Lach the water-spirit. And the mountain-clan responded by drawing upon the fierce power of Agni, and clothed themselves in fire. And so the great peace was broken, and the world divided, and since then, Agni and Lach have never dwelt together without strife and turmoil.”</p><p>He thinks how inappropriate this play is, and he wonders whether Iroh will forbid its performance as a favor for him, before the full reality of the situation crashes down upon him. Perhaps the story is suitable after all. Beside him, Katara is stony-faced and silent.</p><p>And Zuko feels it first, a low rumbling in the ground, and then a deep, earth-splitting crash from the inner city. He feels his eardrums burst in the resultant shockwave. He sees their two guards with fire on their wrists. He takes Katara’s hand in his and blasts fire at Kai and Lan, men he has known since childhood. They scream as the flame engulfs their faces, and they fall away from him. They are in the noble’s suites on the upper level, and finely-dressed Fire Nation men and women are beginning to spill into the hallways, talking. His ears are ringing. He pushes his way through the confused crowd, and when he sees a window, he shoves it open and climbs up and out, and helps her onto the roof. He can hear the stampeding below them, can hear the shouts to find the crown prince, hear the footsteps of armed soldiers. Perhaps Iroh had set him a test, and he failed. Perhaps his uncle has finally decided to finish what he started.</p><p>When he looks over to the palace, he sees only a smoking crater.</p>
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<a name="section0005"><h2>5. Our State Disjoint and Out of Frame</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>He is fortunate that he knows the city. The sound of pursuit fills the air, buildings burn, and from all sides the screaming and wailing and crackling fire assaults them. He clutches Katara’s hand in his, two nobles dressed in gems and gold, and they fly through the filth of the lower streets, avoiding guards and commoners alike. The deeper into the city they go, the more people they see, standing in the alleyways, watching the Fire Palace, or what’s left of it, burn. Across the city, more and more fires spring up, either driven by the hot night wind, or else started by rogue benders.</p><p>Zuko tells himself not to think of his mother, his uncle. Instead, he focuses on escaping the city. He tells himself that if they want to survive the coup, they need to get out into the countryside.</p><p>He does not have the strength to ask what will come next.</p><p>He drags her into the shadows of a tamarin tree to hide from a horde of shrieking men, their chests striped in the bifurcated flame that Zhao has made his own, and she pulls him into an alleyway to duck a phalanx of approaching soldiers, garbed in the red and black of Zhao’s militia. Despite the fact that she is encumbered by the heavy weight of her evening robes, she keeps pace with him, and in a little less than an hour, one of the longest hours of his life, they come at last to the city wall, and he and Katara slip through a disgusting, almost overflowing sewer, and out into the night. Beyond the wall, the sounds of screaming and the stench of smoke still rises, but the ruckus is muted by the dense forest that slopes upward to the mountain. Zuko’s eyes adjust to the dark, and he sees the lights of at least two hundred ships at anchor in the wide, crescent bay.</p><p>“We can hide in a cave until tomorrow evening,” he says. “It’s risky to remain on the peninsula, but I don’t want to try swimming the channel with the tide up and the ships out, and we shouldn’t be seen in daytime.”</p><p>“I’ll never climb a mountain in this dress,” she says. “And I can’t wear evening shoes in the woods.”</p><p>“Well we can’t stay here,” he snaps, and she shakes her head.</p><p>“I wasn’t suggesting we stay here. But I’m a waterbender, in case you’ve forgotten. We can cross the inlet beneath the waves.”</p><p>“It’s at least a six hour swim, and the tide will be against us.”</p><p>“I can do it,” she says. In the distance, a war horn sounds, and his decision is made.</p><p>“Alright,” he says. “We’ll go to Igni Fallow. From there, we can hide ourselves in one of the abandoned granaries on the east side. They’ll search for us, but I doubt they’ll expect us to be off the peninsula, and in any case, all the granaries are connected by underground tunnels. We should be able to escape if necessary.”</p><p>“Lead the way,” she says. </p><p>When he was younger, Iroh used to walk him and Lu Ten down to the beach, to look for pretty shells, or to play in the waves, or to learn to sail or row or swim. On his plump child-legs, he’d managed the trip from the wall to the ocean in about half an hour. Now, moving through the forest on stealthy feet, trying to avoid the bands of soldiers that spring up out of the night with gleaming torches, and stride towards the burning city, it takes them almost two hours. When at last they come to the liminal boundary between tangled forest and bare sand, his breath eases, until he sees the blockade around the island. Fire Nation ships are stationed at regular intervals, and the water between them is alight with ghostfire.</p><p>“That’s a problem,” Katara says. “They’ll see us if we try to cross the beach.”</p><p>“Pity neither one of us is an earthbender,” he says, and she snorts.</p><p>“Wouldn’t matter anyway. Most earthbenders can’t bend sand, at least, not without a great deal of practice.” He wonders if this is true, and if it is, how she knows it. “I’ll raise a fog,” she says. “Once we’re in the ocean we’ll be fine.”</p><p>“No,” Zuko says. “See the flame on the surface? They’ve raised the nets around the harbor. We can’t get through them.”</p><p>“If we get close enough, can you put the flame out?”</p><p>“Sure, but it’ll give us away, and we’ll still have to climb over the net.”</p><p>“That won’t be a problem,” Katara says.</p><p>“It’s razorwire.”</p><p>“Still not a problem.” He wants to protest that it is a problem, that the defenses of the Fire Nation are not designed to be thwarted by a single girl, that she has no idea what she’s doing, but she turns from him, straightens her spine, breathes, and moves. At first he thinks she’s dancing beneath the overgrown trees, because her arms and her legs move contrary to each other, and her hair floats around her, but then he sees the dew coalescing on her fingers, and he feels the shift in the air, and as he watches, a mist forms, expanding with each passing second, and he shivers when it covers them, and spreads out over the sea. He can hear the shouts of warning, the frustration, the orders to light the fog-lanterns, but then she is taking his hand in hers, and he feels the power thrumming through her veins, and for the first time, he wonders why she offered herself up for marriage, what she, a master bender, hoped to gain as the princess of a civil-war torn country.</p><p>He remembers the look in her eyes that he had interpreted as terror, and he suddenly doubts that she was ever afraid of him at all.</p><p>The fog spreads, she pulls him under the water, and she holds the sea back from them as they race across the ocean floor. His formal robes trail in the muck, he feels the dirt destroying his calfskin slippers, and then, at last, they come to the great net. She lifts them, and at her prompting, he douses the fire, sucking the energy into himself. His body temperature shoots up at least fifteen degrees, and he holds the heat within his stomach, preparing himself for the pain of hands ripped raw by razor-sharpened metal, but then she plops them up and over, and he has to stifle a laugh at how easily she avoided the issue. He breathes the fire back out, and the line reignites, and she pulls them back under the water. Then they are running again, racing across the ocean floor in the damp and the cold and the dark, their breaths coming in pants and gasps. She pulls them up to the surface for more air, and, treading water, he looks up at Caldera City, alight with flames, yielding a heat so intense he can feel it brush against his face. She tries to draw him under, but he shakes off her hand.<br/>“Zuko,” she says.</p><p>“A moment,” he says. “I need a moment.” He treads water, watches his city burn, watches the blockade of ships filled with soldiers prepared to conquer, and then she is pulling him down, and dragging him across the seafloor. They surface again close to land, and he has to tow her to shore, shaking from exhaustion.</p><p>“I have to sleep,” she says. “I feel so weak-”</p><p>“I know,” he responds. “It’s alright. I’ll find a place for us.” The light of the burning city is visible from the shore of Igni Fallow, ten miles away, and he does not allow himself to look at it. Instead, he carries her out of the ocean, and up, into the fallow farmland, towards the broken spire of an old granary.</p><p>___________________</p><p>Despite the heat of the summer evening, she is shivering when he lays her down in the underground cellar, so he warms his hands and steams the saltwater off her body. Her dress is waterlogged and completely ruined, and she pulls feebly at it, trying to take it off.</p><p>“You’ll never get it off like that,” he remarks. He’s removed enough evening dresses to know the secret lies in the seemingly extraneous knots. He watches her struggle another moment, and then pushes her hands aside and does the task himself, trying and failing not to imagine that this is the kind of divine, ironic punishment the spirits love dishing out to unsuspecting mortals. He can almost imagine Ula Fee, cackling in her fire-wheel form, standing on the edge of a stage announcing the moral of the story:</p><p>
  <em>The Fire Prince profaned Agni by pretending he consummated his sacred marriage, when in fact, he and his bride deceived both the spirits and the kingdom. And look at them now, undressing each other in the dark of night, in a granary, during a coup! If only they had undressed sooner!</em>
</p><p>His hands brush against her breasts and she flinches and he wants to smash his head open with a rock, if only to escape the awkwardness of the situation. His head is light, and a part of him knows he’s in shock, that he’s going to be incapacitated with grief once he starts truly thinking about his situation. He considers leaving her behind, just turning and fleeing, but she’s in unfamiliar territory, and undoubtedly she’ll be caught. Very unsavory things happened to the last Fire Princess to survive a coup, things that do not bear thinking about.</p><p>“We’ll need the rubies,” he says, and he gathers up her dress where it falls. </p><p>“Okay,” she says, and the next moment, she is asleep. He finishes drying her shift and lies down beside her, his sodden clothes steaming where they touch his skin.</p><p>__________________________</p><p>She comes to him after midday. He is sitting on top of the silo, a great risk, if fire balloons are deployed, but one he can justify taking by the fact that he will see them long before they see him. She’s still dressed only in her thin white shift, and he can see the contours of her body beneath the fabric. She’s taller than most Fire Nation women, her skin much darker, her hair thick and curly and long. In a cold, detached way he realizes that she truly is beautiful, that, garbed in red and gold, she could look like the fabled soldier-queens of the Sun Warriors.</p><p>“Hi,” she says, softly. He does not respond, but looks back across the water, to where Caldera, still burning, spreads its open arms to embrace Zhao’s navy. “I’m sorry,” she says. He can think of no words to respond to that. He thinks of his mother, loving, soft and tender as a winter blossom, her taste in music rustic, her interest in gems muted, her only desire for a life of peace. He thinks of Iroh, mourning his failures. Both dead now, in all likelihood, or captured, which would be worse. And his uncle died knowing his nephew and his niece both reviled him.</p><p>Zuko can only hope his uncle kept news of his intended departure from his mother.</p><p>“I’ve made lunch,” she says. She hands him a bowl of lukewarm stew, mostly last autumn’s lilyhips and unused cider apples, and a few chunks of meat that he thinks with a shudder might be cicadahoppers. He takes a sip, but the taste escapes him, so he takes another. His stomach seems strangely divorced from his body, and he turns back to the burning city.</p><p>“It’s good,” he says, belatedly, when he realizes he should exercise his manners.</p><p>“I’m going to steal us some clothes,” she says. “But I’d like to leave a ruby behind in payment.” He nods his head towards a pile of the gems, two hundred and three, the number of stars in the First House of Heaven, the house of the rising sun. He’s still in his salt-crusted robes, and he knows he should take them off, ruined as they are, but he can’t bring himself to shed his prince’s regalia. She selects a faceted gem that scatters the sun into red light, and he knows he should stop her, should tell her that there are probably soldiers patrolling the fields, and that she has no idea how to conduct herself in secrecy, but his tongue is too heavy to form words. He watches his city burning, he thinks of his mother’s face, and sometime before sunset, she returns, lugging a pack of red fabric, a cauldron, and an oilcloth.</p><p>“I got caught,” she says, and he’s not surprised. “But the old man recognized me, asked if I was the prince’s wife, and when I said yes, he fell at my feet and kissed them, and said that he loves the Fire Lord, and the Fire Lord’s nephew-son, and he gave me all these supplies, and begged me to let you know that the common people love your uncle, and love you.” She pulls out a peasant’s brown shirt and red-dyed pants, and a worn pair of sturdy leather shoes. He realizes she’s dressed herself in a peasant woman’s garb, the kind that leaves the stomach and the shoulders bare, a completely inappropriate look for the Fire Princess. “Come on, Zuko,” she says. “Get dressed.”</p><p>But his limbs seem to have stiffened, or else he’s forgotten how to move them, because when he tries to bring his arms up to undo the clasps that hold his shirt shut, he finds he can’t.</p><p>So her own hands swiftly undress him, and he finds himself wondering if she’s had medical training, because although he probably weighs one and a half times what she does, she knows how to work through the disparity. As though he were an infant, she pulls his shirt from him, and then washes the salt from his body and then she undoes his topknot, and lays his Crown Prince’s pin in his hands, and she rinses his hair with water from a flask at her side, and then she pulls the new, rough cotton shirt over his head, and he regains enough dignity to refuse her help in changing his trousers. She mutters something about making dinner before they go, and he peels the rest of his formal attire from his body, and puts on the new garments. The fabric is light, breathable, and he knows they’ll need to find warm cloaks before they make the mountain passage. Sometime in between imagining his mother dying by fire, and watching the sun set, he realizes he’s made a plan. He scoops up his Crown Prince’s pin, and places it securely in an inside pocket of his trousers, and heads down the groaning metal steps to find her.</p><p>She’s cooking in her new pot, and he smells the delicious scent of firebird and yellow beets, a commoner’s dish even Azula will admit to liking.</p><p>“We need to go to Shui Cheng in the Earth Kingdom,” he says. “There’s a Water Tribe trade center there, and they can take you back to your father.”</p><p>“What about you?” She asks.</p><p>“I’ll see if I can find my uncle’s allies,” Zuko says. “And depending on whether or not my uncle is dead, your father may be obliged to give me ships and men.” Her face freezes, and he flinches at the way she looks at him. “You signed a treaty,” he says, feebly, and he can’t help but feel, once again, like a child.</p><p>“Yes,” she says, evenly. “I did. But like I said before, we’re not married till I have my first child.”</p><p>“Well,” Zuko says, and she shoves a bowl of food into his hands, all her tenderness evaporated, and he’s saved from needing to respond by the sudden hunger that claws up his throat. She doesn’t look at him, even when he presses half the rubies into her hands, and they divide the gems between their pockets and the satchel she was given. She scours the pot and wraps it in the oilcloth, and they slip out just as the moon rises, a waning crescent gleaming in the sky.</p><p>Caldera sits, smoking, across the blockaded water of the bay.</p>
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<a name="section0006"><h2>6. Stooping to Your Clemency</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>He sets their pace. He knows the girl is likely unused to hard travel overland, so he does not push her hard, and in his mind he sets a moderate goal of reaching the curled-tail end of the Fire Nation islands by midwinter, four months away. </p><p>“If you’re moving slowly for my sake, you needn’t,” the waterbender says, when they pause for refreshment. He expects her feet to be paining her, and her stomach to be growling, and her weariness to assail her, but she still seems just as fresh as when they started. </p><p>“Alright,” he says. Perhaps in her tribe they too endure military training, and send their children out into the wild for weeks at a time, to harden them and prepare them for the eternal war. He allows himself to move at a soldier’s pace, eating the ground up with the swift half-jog that he’s been trained since childhood to regard as natural, and she matches him easily, beat for beat, step for step.</p><hr/><p>They stop shortly after sunrise, and hide themselves in a thicket far from the road. The bush is large and thorny, but when they wriggle underneath it, it opens up enough for them to sit without catching their hair in its tangled branches. </p><p>Zuko can feel a blister forming where his boots pinch him too tightly, and he knows he’s in for a hellish couple of weeks. His uncle always said that soldiers were like ostrich-horses, useless without fit feet.</p><p>“I can fish in a river,” she says, dragging him out of his thoughts. “Or gather herbs, but I think we should hide as much as possible while we’re still close to Caldera.”</p><p>“We can last on half rations for a while,” he says, and she nods, and hands him a hunk of bread spread with a thick, foul-smelling cheese. “A gift from my loyal subject, the farmer?” He asks.</p><p>“Correct.” He makes a face, but eats the food, and finds it filling, if not exactly appetizing.</p><p>“We should sleep-” he starts, but the girl is already sprawled out on the ground, her eyes shut and her breaths even.</p><p>Whoever she is, he thinks, she’s used to this. For the first time, he wonders whether she actually is Katara, Hakoda’s daughter from the Southern Water Tribe. Maybe she’s some peasant brigand, or assassin, or maid paid by the chieftain to take his daughter's place. Surely no well-born girl would be so comfortable sprawled out on the dirt.</p><hr/><p>“That’s poisonous.” She tells him, when he’s about to put a red and white colored flower into a pot of boiling water.</p><p>“I’m pretty sure my uncle made tea from it when he took me hunting,” he responds.</p><p>“Well go ahead, if you believe you know so much about plants, but when you die, I’m not burying you,” she says, and he glares up at her before he realizes that she is, in fact, making a joke.</p><p>“It’s not funny to threaten the life of the Crown Prince,” he sniffs.</p><p>“Well, considering I just saved you from a horrific death at the hands of the white jade bush, I think I can be forgiven.”</p><hr/><p>They sleep during the day, collapsing shortly after dawn and dozing until after midafternoon, hidden in brush or caves or abandoned buildings. Usually, Zuko lies awake, his eyes scarred by the memory of the burning palace, his thoughts turned towards his mother, his uncle, his servants and companions and aides, all consumed by devouring fire, until his body defeats his mind and fitful sleep masters him. </p><p>But one day, fretful and restless, he fails to find any sleep at all, and so he watches the waterbender beside him, her breaths regular, her arms wrapped round herself despite the heat. Awake, she is always relaxed, her muscles absent any noticeable tension, and in sleep her whole body is completely slack. As he watches, almost imperceptibly, she tenses. Her muscles bunch and her limbs stiffen and she opens her mouth in a silent cry, her face twisted in terror. He wonders what she dreams about.</p><p>He would be embarrassed if another woke him from a nightmare, would be ashamed to have that weakness known. But the seconds tick by, and she only tenses further, and begins to whimper, strange sounds like an animal in pain.</p><p>“Katara,” he says, softly. She does not respond, so he shakes her shoulder, and she springs upright, coalescing a stream of water from the air, and wrapping it around herself. “Katara,” he says again, and her eyes focus, and she allows the water to become mist, dissipating through her open hands.</p><p>“Sorry,” she murmurs. “Bad dream.”</p><p>He does not ask, and she does not offer. But two or three days later, dreaming of his father’s golden eyes and burning hand, she nudges him awake, and he is grateful for it.</p><hr/><p>He drags her off the road, pushing her into the thick undergrowth and pulling a cover of leaves over their heads.</p><p>“What do you think you’re-”</p><p>“Shh!” He hisses. The sound grows more obvious, the distant, low whirr of a war balloon. The machine comes into view over the western horizon, and floats in low, lazy lines, north to south, west to east. Whoever’s operating it, they’re obviously looking for someone, because the search they conduct is thorough. It’s almost dawn by the time it fades out of sight, and he and Katara stretch their aching legs and hurry deeper into the woods, and hide themselves again.</p><hr/><p>And as the days pass, one after another, Zuko’s heels crack and bleed and callous, his stomach adjusts to the poor fare of road food, and he comes to appreciate the simplicity of life without the constraints of court. In the style of pilgrim-wanderers, he and Katara swap stories, the little children’s tales of their respective peoples at first, and then, the legends of their tribes and families. He learns she is a descendant of the great blackfish that swim her frigid seas, and that many of her ancestors reverted to their earlier form. He tells her the story of the Sun Warriors, and about the deaths of the dragons.</p><p>She’s good at storytelling, she’s got an ear for a tale’s cadence, and her voice rises and falls like the sea when she speaks. Sometimes, as they slog through a fen at midnight, with only the fire in his palm and the stars above to light the way, he finds himself merely listening to the way her voice undulates, rather than to her story itself.</p><p>They avoid villages, except when they desperately need supplies. They leave behind one of Katara’s rubies in payment when they steal firehens, or appropriate a spare pair of underclothes, or curl up in a hayloft to escape a torrential thunderstorm. There are more and more frequent patrols of soldiers on the roads, and he and Katara find they are forced to make long detours into backcountry, ploughing through swamps and thickets and unhewn forests, swimming small inlets and backtracking through rivers and always keeping the sea to the north, as they head east, swinging slowly around the great circle of the Fire Nation islands.</p><p>“What were you, before you were my wife?” He asks her one afternoon, as she bathes her feet in the runoff of a small stream. They’ve been washing their clothes on the rocks, and she’s dressed only white bindings, so he does not allow himself to look at her. </p><p>“A waterbender,” she says. “A chieftain’s daughter. A sister.”</p><p>“But how do you know how to travel overland?” He presses, and she wrings water from her hair with her delicate brown hands, her movements lithe and sinuous. He’s reminded of the dancers in the plays his mother favors (favored?), because her movements are calculated towards grace, and each of her gestures flows naturally into another.</p><p>“It’s how I got to the Northern Water Tribe,” she says, at last.</p><p>“You didn’t sail?”</p><p>“I was going for waterbender training,” she says. “And we didn’t want to draw attention to ourselves.” He thinks about this, thinks about the expert way she pitches their tent, the way she lays out their clothes to dry, the way she hoards and saves their food, the way she can walk miles without stopping. “And you, Zuko?” She asks. “Who were you, before you were my husband?”</p><p>How does he respond to that?</p><p>“A disappointment to my father,” he says. Her face draws in sympathy, and he regrets his words instantly. A prince has no business sharing the secrets of the royal family, even with other members. He has no need for pity.</p><p>“Your uncle loved you, I think,” she says, in a way that’s meant to be comforting. Over the course of the month that they have spent together, she has never brought up the destruction of his city, the death of his uncle and mother. To hear her speak of Iroh in the past rends him open.</p><p>“He did,” Zuko says, thinking of the way his uncle looked at him, the way he dressed him in gold and crimson, the way he hired tutors and trainers and masters for him, no matter how impractical his interest. He’d even pardoned Piandao, an enemy of the Fire Nation who slew one hundred men rather than complete his service in the army, so that Zuko could learn swordsmanship from him. His uncle had always taken time out of his busy schedule as Fire Lord to train him and his sister.</p><p>His uncle had killed his own brother, and he had done it for Zuko.</p><p>“And I’m sure he’d be proud of you,” she continues. “For ensuring that I get home.” He thinks of Iroh’s tear, hot on his hand, when Zuko had told him he intended to find Azula, and he feels fury at himself for allowing his poor uncle to die believing both his brother’s children hated him.</p><p>“You don’t know what you're talking about,” he snaps, and turns away from her, but she splashes him with a bit of water.</p><p>“Don’t do that, Zuko,” she says. He glowers at her, willing her to leave him alone. “Don’t turn away from me.” She splashes him again, and he meets the water with a burst of fire that sends it to steam. She glares at him, and sends a bigger wave. With a touch more effort, he counters it. “I’ve never sparred with a firebender,” she says. Unconsciously, he touches the palm-shaped scar over his left eye. The memory of his father’s disappointment, his fury, washes over him.</p><p>“I wouldn’t want to hurt you.”</p><p>“Let’s start with the basic drills then,” she says. “You do defense, I’ll do offense, and we can work from there. We’re both master benders, I’m sure we can figure it out.”</p><hr/><p>His uncle, quoting some dusty old philosopher whom Zuko had no use for, had explained Azulon’s extermination of the waterbenders thusly: “Nothing is more soft and yielding than water. Yet for attacking the solid and strong, nothing is better.” Zuko, by that point a more than decent firebender (due in a large part to his uncle’s tutelage, and not natural skill) had not understood. Water was the weakest of the elements, everybody knew that. Water was cowardly in nature, fleeing adversity, shunning danger.</p><p>But Zuko, covered in dozens of tiny cuts from Katara’s ice shards, thinks that perhaps he underestimated the element. Certainly fire is superior, requires more power and precision and control, but water is not to be handled as lightly as he imagined. They had fought to a draw, practicing basic defensive and offensive moves, each yielding to the other in turn. </p><p>“Are you okay?” She asks him, and he nods. She smiles at him, she is vibrant, glowing, radiant. “That was amazing!” She says. “It was so much fun, it was so different from sparring with other waterbenders. We have to do this more often!” She’s practically bouncing with happiness, while Zuko only feels irritation at his mistakes. “Did I hurt you?” She asks, softer, when he does not smile. </p><p>“No,” he snaps. </p><p>“Did I do something wrong?” She asks, softer still. </p><p>“No, of course not!”</p><p>“It’s just, bending always makes me so happy,” she says. He wants to tell her she sounds young, childish, but with her hair tied back from her face and her glistening eyes, she hardly looks like a grown woman. </p><p>“That’s nice,” he responds, rinsing the sweat from his face with water from the brook. He’s aware of how caustic he sounds, and he feels a twinge of guilt.</p><p>“Doesn’t it make you happy?” He thinks of the hours he spent drilling when he was younger, first with his father, and then, when his father gave up in disgust at Zuko’s mediocre abilities, with his uncle or another tutor. Azula, almost from the moment she could walk, reveled in her ability to ignite fires, but Zuko’s earliest memories are of trying and failing to maintain a flame.</p><p>“Why should it?” he asks. “Bending is work, not pleasure.”</p><p>“But your form is beautiful, and you’re so effortless.”</p><p>“It’s not effortless,” he says. But he’s pleased that she thinks it is.</p><p>“The way people spoke about you,” she starts. “They made it seem like you were incompetent. Incapable. Unskilled.”</p><p>“Gee, thanks.”</p><p>“No, I’m just saying, you’re different than how I expected.” He thinks of her, afflicted by nightmares, capable of walking miles on an empty stomach, used to stealing mouthfuls of food and hiding in bushes alongside the road.</p><p>“You’re different than how I expected too,” he says.</p><hr/><p>The days blend together, and the world sinks into the early autumn rains, which makes travel miserable. The road grows perpetually muddy, and everything is always damp. Katara, of course, appreciates the excess of her element, and she holds the worst of the rain from them with one hand, while making shapes out of the water with another.</p><p>Every time they enter a village, he expects to see their faces on posters, advertising a reward for the capture of the Crown Prince and his wife, but nothing materializes. As they move farther away from Caldera, out into the countryside, he and Katara gradually stop traveling at night, and begin to move during the day. Filthy from the road, made thin by scant rations and hard labor, his skin darkened by the sun to a shade not too far off from hers, they look like peasant wanderers.</p><p>He asks old men or women, when he sees them, what the news from the capital is, and as always, the answer is the same. The royal family is dead. Civil war is constant. Refugees are fleeing from the city to the country, bringing disease and crime and poverty with them. The world is burning.</p><p>Zuko wonders where Azula is. His sister may be vicious, but she is capable of maintaining control. If she had orchestrated the coup, surely she would have stepped forward by now?</p><p>The days meld together. Waking, walking, eating, drinking, sparring (though they are so worn that neither can spar for long), sleeping. When she shivers and stiffens, he shakes her from her sleep. Not infrequently, she awakens him too.</p><p>She does not look at him with pity, when she draws him from his nightmares. She does not ask of them, he does not ask of hers.</p><p>He decides that, all told, she is a decent companion.</p><hr/><p>When Katara runs out of fairy-stories, she tells him of her village. He learns about the seal-hunts and penguin-sledding and the great Midwinter Feast. And when these stories fail too, she tells him of her mother’s death. </p><p>His uncle had informed him of the broad outline of the incident. But to hear her speak of Yon Rha’s cruelty, his violence, leaves him helpless and furious. He promises himself that if he ever comes to power, he will not practice his uncle’s restraint. </p><hr/><p>Some days he feels unspooled from himself, drawn back into the bitter memories of his mother’s flight from Caldera, with him and Azula in tow. She’d smuggled them out on a ship, but then they’d walked overland through the Earth Kingdom for at least a quarter year, dodging bandits and brigands and Fire Nation soldiers, until they found General Iroh, withdrawn from the city, and beginning the long march home.</p><p>He’d taken one look at Ursa, pilgrim-thin and sun tanned, and he’d led them into his tent for baths and a filling meal, and he and his mother had shared hushed words, and then he’d raised his standards and refused to disband his army when he crossed the Fire Nation border, and instead he marched into Caldera and demanded his birthright. He had an army at his back, but he came dressed in white and yellow, the colors of peace and harmony. Ozai had laughed, and called his children to his side. Azula had run to her father, embraced him, allowed herself to be drawn into his arms, weeping for their long separation. Zuko had clutched his mother’s hand, incapable of meeting his father’s eyes. And so his father had crossed to him and pressed his burning hand to Zuko’s eye, to mark him as a traitor and a dishonored son. And Iroh, dressed in the colors of peace, had slaughtered his brother, fried him to a crisp, and claimed his birthright in defiance of tradition and custom.</p><p>When he runs out of fairy-stories to tell, he offers her this one. She is silent for a long time afterwards.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0007"><h2>7. They Say You Spirits oft Walk in Death</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>“Let’s do speed drills,” she suggests. She’s already panting, her light robes are drenched with sweat, and Zuko feels his own breath coming in gasps. His heart is racing, and he takes a moment to fill his lungs with air, and then, at her prompting, he breathes out, forming fire with his hands, and sending spurts of yellow flame, in quick succession, towards her. </p><p>He’s known how to block a fire attack since he was nine years old. The form is simple deflection, a parting of the flame with two hands, a sweeping motion to disperse the energy, and then, the recollection of the scattered heat and the refocusing in his stomach.</p><p>She does nothing of the sort. Where he would stand his ground, she leaps lightly aside, where he would counter with an offensive attack, she moves backwards. Where he would pause to regroup and gather energy, she strikes, racing forward, wrapped in water. He watches her as she moves sinuously from attack to defense and back again, one form blending into the other, the transitions virtually indistinguishable.</p><p>He’s sparred with her enough to be familiar with the simple forms, and, though he struggles to believe his eyes, she sticks purely to the five basic movements she’d previously shown him, although she bends so swiftly that he has to work to pick out the individual movements.</p><p>“My turn,” she says, and he readies his stance. She sends a flurry of ice shards towards him, and he parts them easily enough, using his fire to sweep them aside, but they reform in the time it takes him to recollect his energy.</p><p>He considers the fluidness of her motions, and he spins in a swift circle, the fifth basic form, generating a stream of fire around him. Instead of sending it outward, however, he maintains it, bending its heat around him, and blocking Katara’s attacks with that defense alone.</p><p>“Hey!” She cries. “You’re cheating, that’s a new form!”</p><p>“Is not!” He answers. “It’s just the fifth form extended.”</p><p>“I thought you told me the fifth and first forms existed in only one duration!” </p><p>“I changed my mind,” he shrugs, and she splashes him. Her anger reminds him so much of Azula’s annoyance when he beat her at Pai Sho that he doesn’t even bother to block the water.</p><p>“I thought firebenders were supposed to be traditional,” she huffs, but she’s smiling. She coalesces water from the air and drinks from it, then offers it to him. He gets exactly one deep draught, before she shifts the stream so his shirt is drenched.</p><p>“Have you no manners, Crown Princess?” He demands, and she rolls her eyes.</p><p>“Sorry, your royal highness. Complete accident.”</p><p>“Uh-huh.” But she holds the water steady for him, and he drinks his fill of the clear, cold stream.</p><p>__________________________</p><p>There are more and more people on the road. Most are filthy, starving, footsore and desperate. Zuko and Katara do their best to avoid them, but as the weather worsens and the rains move in, their progress is slowled, and they are gradually drawn into a group of about thirty, half children, half grownups, all hungry.</p><p>There’s precious little food, and what there is, is jealously guarded. The game animals vanish from the woods, the rivers are empty of fish, even for Katara, and the villages will not sell food, except for gold or gems. None of the refugees can afford the asking price.</p><p>“We can’t stay here,” he whispers to Katara, as they sit before a small fire shared by about ten others. “There’s liable to be plague to accompany this famine soon, and the more people we encounter, the more we risk.” He’s in terror of the illnesses that ravaged the Fire Nation in his uncle’s youth, he knows the stories of the dead and dying very well. He’s heard, over the past few days, of miraculous healings done by spirits, but these only make him more nervous. Once people stop acting rational, anything can happen.</p><p>“Sing a song, Nara,” a man tells a woman to Zuko’s left, and she sighs, but she pulls a guitarron from her back, and strums the instrument thoughtfully, tuning it with deft fingers.</p><p>“What should I sing?”</p><p>“Sing the new one, the one we learned from the Pelin village.” A large, burly man suggests. The woman casts a quick look at Zuko and Katara, as though assessing something, and then she picks out a familiar ballad-melody, her fingers deftly plucking the strings. </p><p>“Strangers, this is a song about a kind spirit. I’ve heard twenty similar stories on the road. I know young folk like you find it difficult to believe in goodness, let alone in good spirits, but I promise you, I saw the mother and daughter myself, with three cows all making milk, and three goats all making cream. This song happened just the way I say it happened.</p><p>“A mother without food<br/>And a child without milk<br/>Laid their last hen in the hay.<br/>The mother shed tears<br/>But the child cheered<br/>That they would eat her that day.</p><p>“The mother was wise,<br/>While her daughter was young,<br/>She knew that by eating the hen<br/>There’d be no more eggs,<br/>No more hope to outrun<br/>The hunger that hunted them.</p><p>“The mother made sharp<br/>The knife at her hip<br/>And bade the girl fetch her the fowl.<br/>But where it had been<br/>A large ruby gleamed<br/>In the hay in the poor woman’s hovel.” The people murmur appreciatively, and Zuko feels a stab of guilt at the knowledge that he has a purse still half full of rubies, and a stab of relief that they hadn’t just snatched the hen without leaving anything in return.</p><p>“That’s two songs I’ve heard about us in two months,” Katara whispers to him, her voice so soft he has to strain to hear it. </p><p>“Our wedding song was artistically more impressive,” he responds. “But this one’s quite catchy.”</p><p>“Sing the final verse!” The man says, and Zuko is surprised, because that particular variation of the ballad is supposed to have only three stanzas, and all of the paired images were resolved.</p><p>“Not alone,” the woman, Nara, says, and there’s a general murmur of agreement, and she strums the guitarron again, and the voices all around them lift in song.</p><p>“The spirits have come<br/>To the earth once again,<br/>Punishing and setting free<br/>With knives at our hips<br/>And songs on our lips<br/>We cry may it be, may it be.”</p><p>Zuko leaps upright, and the small group stares at him with sudden hostility.</p><p>“Do you have a problem, boy?” A burly man asks. Zuko sees he does indeed have a knife at his hip, and he slips it easily from its sheath, and holds the blade so it catches the reflected light of the fire.</p><p>“Sit down,” Katara says, her voice low, warning.</p><p>“No,” he says. “Just thought I heard something.”</p><p>“I think perhaps you ought to sing the last verse,” a woman, a former soldier judging by her alert bearing, says. Her voice is soft but filled with authority. “Just to prove your friendship to us.”</p><p>“The Fire Lord was good to me,” Zuko says, expecting the tension to thicken further. Instead the man sheathes his knife, and the others lean back into the warmth of the fire.</p><p>“Iroh was a good man, better than his father.” The military woman says, her voice contemplative. “He wrote me a letter when my daughter died. Signed it himself, apologizing for her loss at Ba Sing Se. The page had a tear stain on it. But Iroh’s dead, the Crown Prince too, and his wife. No one knows anything about the Princess Azula, and we’re probably better for it. I heard she was mad. No, my boy, the world must change. The spirits gave us the Fire Lord, and now they’ve chosen to take him away. We have no need for another.” Zuko sits, scowling, and Katara presses close to him, her words soft in his ear.</p><p>“What was that about?”</p><p>“The line, the one about punishing and setting free? It’s from an old, old song, one of the sacred ones, about one of the first Fire Lords. She was so universally hated that Agni came to earth in human form, and slew her, and decreed that for one hundred years, the people would serve no Fire Lord, but instead each village would rule itself. ”</p><p>“My people pick their chieftains,” Katara says, conversationally. He glowers at her.</p><p>“We’re the Blood of Agni. We don’t need to be chosen, we’ve already been chosen, our birth makes us worthy.”</p><p>“And I suppose you were divinely ordained to slaughter the Air Nomads and my tribe’s waterbenders too?” Her tone is arch; he bites his tongue. Certainly his father had told him so, and his grandfather. He’d grown up hearing tales about the Fire Nation’s greatness, its wealth compared to the world’s poverty, its technological marvels, its ingenuous citizens, its powerful rulers. But his ancestors had destroyed the Air Nomads, had almost killed her too. And if they’d succeeded, he’d be dead, and the male part, at least, of Agni’s Line would have failed. So either Agni had not meant for his people to defeat the other benders, or Agni had meant the destruction of his own Line. </p><p>Besides, Katara doesn’t deserve to be exterminated like a louse. She’s a good companion, she carries her share of the weight, she keeps watch when necessary, when it’s her turn to cook, she prepares excellent meals, and she’s an inventive sparring partner.</p><p>And the stories she tells are only remnants and whisperings of her murdered people.</p><p>“No,” he says, softly. “No, we weren’t.” She touches his hand, only a slight brushing of fingers, but enough that he knows she is not angry with him.</p><p>The bard sings another song, one that Zuko does know, and he hums along, and tries to put the ballad of the ruby-bringer from his mind.</p><p><br/>________________________</p><p>He’s crying when she wakes him from his next nightmare. He’s instantly, furiously embarrassed at the tears streaming down his face, and he swipes them aside, trying to dry his eyes and master his body.</p><p>“Zuko,” she says, and her voice is soft and tender, her intonation maternal.</p><p>“It’s just allergies,” he says, but a sob cracks the middle of his sentence, so he doubts she’s convinced.</p><p>__________________________</p><p>He’s getting hungry, and so is Katara, but what’s worse is the children who whimper piteously in their mothers’ arms. The Fire Nation has known famine before, of course, but not in his lifetime, and while he knows that suffering is unavoidable, he hates how miserable the children sound, and how they beg for food that does not exist.</p><p>“We’re going to do something about this,” Katara tells him. He’s spent the better part of the day trailing in her wake, his stomach growling and his eyes bleary from exhaustion, plucking plants that she tells him are edible. She brewed a simmering stew, which the military woman and her companions had contributed to, and they had fed the children, but not enough. They had intended to practice their lower intermediate bending forms, but instead, she’d found a couple unseasonable pinkberries, and they’d shared them in an attempt to quell the gnawing hunger in their stomachs. If anything, the mouthful of fruit had only sharpened his want.</p><p>“I don’t know what we can do,” he says. He thinks of the full palace kitchens with longing.</p><p>“Nor do I,” she sighs. “I wish Sokka were here. He always has a plan.”</p><p>“I don’t know if I can spar tonight,” he says, feeling exhaustion leaching into his body. He sprawls on the ground, his eyes fixed on the waning crescent moon, and she joins him.</p><p>“Me neither,” she says.</p><p>“We’ve got to find food,” he says. She nods. His brain is fuzzy, the edges of the world are blurred. He doesn’t remember ever being so hungry in his life, and he hates the thought of children starving in their own country.</p><p>“I wonder if there really could have been peace,” she murmurs. He thinks of Iroh’s long hours spent in council, his recall of the troops, his new motifs of vines and flowers and the warming sun, his reduction of taxes. And he thinks of how ready he was to throw it all away, to abandon Iroh and the New Peace and join with Zhao’s army and seek vengeance on behalf of his father.</p><p>“Maybe the old ways are inescapable,” he says. “My mother used to say she thought the Avatar alone could restore balance.” The pain that knifes his heart when he speaks of his mother surprises him. It’s as though, for one brief moment, he’s watching the palace consumed in flames, helpless to act, incapable of doing anything but fleeing.</p><p>“He will,” Katara says. “I believe he will.”</p><p>“If there even is an Avatar,” Zuko says, morosely. “Maybe we’ll live to see him reborn. Or maybe the spirits really will come to earth in human form and save us from ourselves. I heard a little girl got cured of blood poisoning last night by one of her village spirits. Maybe we won’t have to rescue ourselves after all.”</p><p>__________________________</p><p>It’s only when they are trudging through a narrow gorge, having been turned away from yet another village by yet another band of men wielding weapons that an idea strikes him, luminous in its brilliance. He’s familiar with the general topography of the Fire Nation, trained from his early years in the mountains and rivers and small villages that dot his hills, but due to backtracking and flooded bridges and hostile villages, he’s only had a general idea of where they are, especially since they left the ocean behind, to detour around the Black Cliffs. But passing through the gorge, he catches sight of a crumbled statue of Avatar Roku, and the map in his head immediately reorients. </p><p>“Katara!” He pulls her aside, his mind racing. “Katara, I know where we are! Only a mile or two away, there’s a royal granary. It’s got seed corn mostly, but it’s got extra food too, enough to sustain five hundred for a year.”</p><p>“How many guards do you think it will have?” She asks. He beams at her, feeling excitement welling in his breast.</p><p>“None, that’s the best part! It’s hidden, it’s one of seven, and the locations are known only to the royal family.”</p><p>“Alright,” she says. “We’ll go tonight and check it out.” </p><p>His mood remains light, he even sings along with one of the traveler’s songs, not about the ruby bringer, but about the beautiful, lovelorn Orahama. The crying children drive his thoughts towards the excess food, and his stomach warms as he imagines thin Imo, or scrawny Jayee, gulping down hot gruel.</p><p>When the sun sets, but before the moon rises, he and Katara slip away from the small fire where they lay their pallets, and they adopt the easy half-jog of a Fire Nation soldier, eating up the ground with sure, silent steps. They come to the granary, deserted, just as he said, and he ignites a fire in his palm, looking for the secret hinge that will grant him access.</p><p>But the building is half-crumbled, its doors blasted open, its insides stripped bare even of seed corn, the one sure guarantee of a secure harvest in the autumn.</p><p>“Fuck,” he breathes. He hadn’t realized the extent of his hopefulness, hadn’t realized how desperate he is to see the starving bellies filled, not least his own, certainly, but more importantly those of the mothers and the bone-thin children he’s helped carry on his shoulder. “Fuck, fuck fuck!” He can’t help the blast of fire that erupts out of him, tearing up the wall in search of anything combustible, finding nothing, and fizzling into smoke.</p><p>“It’s bad luck,” Katara says. “But we’ll make do, Zuko. We’ll struggle through.” She touches his shoulder, and he shrugs her off.</p><p>“We’re going to find food,” he says. </p><p>“There is no food,” she says, and he shakes his head.</p><p>“Not here. But there’s an army barracks only about a mile away, on top of the ridge. It’s a strategically important position, and since, last we heard, Zhao’s men run this district, it’s guaranteed to be occupied. We’ll sneak in, raid their stockpile, and sneak out.”</p><p>“You’re going to steal from the Fire Nation?” She asks, her tone dubious.</p><p>“I’m the Crown Prince, it’s my food, I own it. I decide who gets it.”</p><p>“We’ll get caught,” she says, but she’s smiling, and he knows she’ll go along with his plan. </p><p>“There are spirits wandering the land.” He says. “Perhaps it’s time for us to reclaim our place among them.”</p><p>And so Katara mixes the yellow clay with water, and paints spirit stripes on their skin, and freezes their hair so it stands upright, like a snarling polar dog, she says, and then they are off, racing through the undergrowth once more. As they move, Katara calls a mist to shield them, and he lights their way with a set of flickering flames that leap ahead of them, into the night.</p><p>They come upon the barracks from the south, up a steep, rocky hill that is difficult for him to maneuver in his ill-fitting boots. They bring the mist with them, shielding them from sight and causing the watchman to strike the high-alert bell. </p><p>Zuko knows his way around a military fort. He scales the wall, heinously low for such a vital outpost, and helps Katara up and over, and then they are moving, swiftly and silently, through the back hallways, and into the pantry.</p><p>It’s provisioned well, stocked full almost to overflowing with salted meat and grains and fruits, fresh and dried. He fills his pack with the food, beginning with the most nourishing, and ending with a box of ginseng tea leaves, his uncle’s favorite. Katara moves just as quickly. He’s thinking that they’ve managed it, they’ve gotten enough food to ensure good meals for a month, when a pair of soldiers round the corner and let out a startled shout. Katara spins around, hampered by her bag of food, and manages to freeze one, but the other escapes, rushes crying down the hall, and Zuko hears movement.</p><p>“How many?” She asks him.</p><p>“No fewer than twenty, no more than forty-five.”</p><p>“Do you have a plan?”</p><p>“Don’t get caught?” He suggests. He sets down his bag, and his eyes catch on the dual swords strapped to the frozen soldier’s back. He pulls them free, ignoring the man’s disgruntled umph, and swings them experimentally.</p><p>“I didn’t know firebenders used weapons,” she remarks. The sound of feet in the corridor is growing closer, and they flee from the larder, out into the courtyard.</p><p>“Most don’t,” he says. “But my uncle always humored me.”</p><p>“New moon night, I think,” she says, wrapping a mist around them, and he understands, and draws the fire from the sconces and into himself. The door bursts open, and he hears the cry of shock from one man, whose torch Zuko extinguishes as soon as he crosses the threshold.</p><p>“There’s a mist!” he cries. “It’s like fucking ink, the fires are out!”</p><p>“You’re a firebender, idiot,” his commander says, roughly. “Spread out, search the courtyard.” Zuko draws the heat of the firebenders into himself, leeching it from them as soon as they emit it. They’re sloppy, poorly trained, typical rustics only interested in power without form. His stomach starts to burn from the contained energy.</p><p>“It’s too wet to light a fire, Sir,” a third man says, and Zuko hears a slice and a gurgling sound, and he imagines one of Katara’s ice daggers has found its mark. He shuts his eyes, hears the breathing of the men, and stabs. There’s a slump, and a wet sloshing, and a strangled cry.</p><p>“Damn it, men!” The commander says. “Get the fucking lights on! You out here, surrender at once, you’re outnumbered!” Zuko hears a laugh that sends chills down his spine, and only his familiarity with Katara convinces him that she is the one making the noise, not a spirit. “Who are you, what do you want?”</p><p>“Now I have come to the earth once again,” she hisses, the words guttural, deep in her throat. He hears another man cry out, and he finds another with his sword and strikes, piercing him through his stomach. </p><p>“Near the wall!” The commander cries, and Zuko draws the fire from the man’s palm into his stomach.</p><p>“Punishing and setting free,” he says, in the same eerie monotone, drawing the men away from Katara. “Fifth extended!” He shouts, and he trusts her to have understood as he spins in a circle and expels the heat from his stomach, out into the air, creating a wall of flames hotter than any he had ever before produced, glowing a bright yellow and spreading out from him, maintaining their heat and intensity, allowing Katara to apprehend any who might try to flee. </p><p>The whole fight lasts perhaps two and a half minutes, and it ends with twenty two men lying wounded on the ground.</p><p>“They’re spirits!” He hears one whisper, his mouth bloody, as he and Katara slip back to retrieve their satchels. </p><p>The blood in his veins feels like liquid fire, and the swords in his hands feel like home.</p>
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<a name="section0008"><h2>8. He May Not, as Unvalued Persons Do, Carve for Himself</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>He and Katara give most of the food to the military woman, who eyes it and them with frank suspicion, but asks no questions. When he suggests that more food can be gotten from a mysteriously undefended outpost, she nods her head, and promises to retrieve more supplies for the group.</p><p>And then he sits Katara down and lays out their options. They can make the perilous passage over the Black Cliffs, and risk the worst of the autumn storms and the winter snows in the high mountains, but hopefully make good time. Or, they can continue on with the group of refugees, and double the length of their journey, and risk disease and famine and the hostile bands of highwaymen that have been reported in the villages.</p><p>It’s not a choice for him, or for Katara. They make their farewells, and strike out into the wilderness.</p><p>______________________________</p><p>He teaches her a traveling-song in the old language, and she teaches him a chant that rowers use to time their strokes around the ice floes.</p><p>She shows him how to know edible from inedible roots, and how to make flour from acorns. He shows her how to lay a snare, and how to walk soundlessly over fallen leaves.</p><p>He beats her using a novel combination of the fourth intermediate and the third advanced forms, inspired by her fluid gestures. She encases him in ice using a new move modeled on his first basic form.</p><p>They rise late each day, and walk until late afternoon, gathering edible plants where they find them, hunting when they come across prey animals. They dine at sunset, and then walk onwards, the moon at their backs, stopping after midnight. It’s a compromise to his preference for day, and hers for night.</p><p>When they spar, they abide by arbitrary rules they select during the day. Only offensive moves instead of defensive ones, only forms that use one hand, only discrete moves (he usually wins those rounds), only continuous moves (she tends to beat him handily), bending using legs only (they both struggle) bending with an immobilized body (he has the advantage, due to Iroh’s insistence on a strong root), and then, one day, they decide to try bending using each other’s forms.</p><p>It’s disastrous, and they collapse, winded, on the earth, Katara having produced only a trickle of water, and Zuko having made only small puffs of grey smoke.</p><p>“I feel like I’m nine again,” she says, and he laughs, but her words catch in his mind, a burr in an ostrich horse’s flesh, and he brings them up when they lay out their bedrolls.</p><p>“I thought you said you raised the sea when you were two.”</p><p>“I did,” she says. From the way she says it, he has no doubt that there’s a village story in her words, the kind that gets told and retold, exaggerated and amplified until the original kernel of truth is all but forgotten. “Well, I was almost three, but still.”</p><p>“Then surely by nine you were a proficient bender? Even I knew all my basic forms by nine.”</p><p>“After I proved I was a waterbender, my father was ecstatic, but there had been no benders in my village for almost fifteen years. My father couldn’t send messenger birds to the other settlements, so he and his helmsman took a kayak out into the cold waters,” her voice drops into the sing-song intonation of an accomplished oral storyteller, and she dips in and out of the traditional meter of old stories, and he finds himself drawn in to her story. “They skimmed the grey ocean beneath the grey sun, one day on the ice, two days on the water, three days marching overland. And then in the great glacier’s shadow, look, my father’s old village! He and his helmsman asked for the old bender-woman who lived in the high fells.</p><p>“A raid had taken her. Bad luck. He and his helmsman took their kayak out into the cold waters, and rowed, one day on the ice, two days on the water, and came to his father’s old village. And look, when he asked for the old bender man who was his father’s childhood friend, they took him to a grave. Bad luck.</p><p>“He and his helmsman took their kayak out into the cold waters, and rowed, one day on the ice, two days on the water, three days up the thin river, four marching overland, and came to his father’s father’s village, the home of the inland people who hunt caribou elk, who for many years escaped the interest of firebenders. But look, their benders, even their young children, lay in a pile of bones. Bad luck.</p><p>“And so he and his helmsman took their kayak out into the cold waters, and moved through his lineage, until my father had visited his kin in every settlement, and his people in every tribe, until he had sailed round the entire pole. And he came back to my village, and swept me into his arms, and his tears froze on his cheeks, because amongst all our people, I was the last daughter of the Moon, the last with the power to lift the sea, and he read in my talent, my death.</p><p>“His fear was justified. My mother was dead when he returned, slain by a firebender who had heard tell of me-” her tale falters and she falls still, and Zuko feels something inside himself splinter at her words.</p><p>“You were the last waterbender in the entire south pole?” He asks.</p><p>“Yes,” she says. “I had no one to guide me, and only the old stories to tell me what a bender did.”</p><p>“Katara,” he says, the horror frozen in his breast. “Katara, we did that to you?”</p><p>“You did,” she says, and her tone is somber. </p><p>When he was two, he already had a master, intended to wake the latent fire in his soul. </p><p>“All your benders are dead?”</p><p>“They are,” she says.</p><p>“And your tribe sent you here, their last bender, to marry me? And your father didn’t even come with you to see the wedding?”</p><p>“I came at another’s behest,” she says. “Jeong-Jeong convinced me, actually. He promised to watch over me. My brother didn’t know what I planned, no one did, except for Chief Arnook and some of the elders. It’s possible that even my father isn’t aware yet, if he hasn’t docked to receive information.”</p><p>“Katara,” he says. “Why? What could possibly-”</p><p>“Zuko,” she says, and her words are soft. “Someday, maybe, I can tell you. But it’s not my story, and I’m only a small part of what’s happening.” Her words chill him, and he asks the question that has haunted him for months, niggling in the back of his mind, jostled by all his suspicions of her.</p><p>“Katara,” he says. “Did you do this? Did you kill my uncle, my mother-”</p><p>“No,” she says. “No.” She looks at him, her gaze piercing, and he can see a struggle in her liquid eyes. “I came to,” she says. “I intended to kill you, to disrupt the line of succession. I’ve met firebenders in the past, a few decent, like Jeong-Jeong, but most bloodthirsty brutes. One murdered a very dear friend. I thought if only I could endure you for a few months, an opportunity would arise, and I’d find a way to make it look like an accident.”</p><p>“After what my people did to yours-” he starts. The words are tangled up inside of him, and he wonders how she can stand to be so close to him. “We’ve been alone for months. It would have been easy.”</p><p>“I’ve thought about it,” she says. She pulls water from the air, makes mist, makes ice, and wraps the liquid round her arms. “But I won’t, despite my orders. You’re not the kind of prince that we want dead.”</p><p>“What do you want?” He asks her, and she twists the water into a sinuous curve that slips between her spread fingers.</p><p>“I want my children to grow up in a world where war is a bad memory.”</p><p>They are sitting on a rock outcropping, watching the sun set, fugitives and thieves and pretend spirits. The swords at his back are the only metal he owns, the clothes he wears are his entire wardrobe, the food he eats is food he has to gather, but in the depths of his satchel, he has his Crown Prince’s pin, a duty and a promise and a birthright.</p><p>He has stolen food from his soldiers to feed his citizens. He has injured his countrymen to protect his innocents. He has taught offensive firebending to an alien.</p><p>He has wandered with his people through inhospitable villages and unfriendly towns, driven from their homes by civil war and fraternal bloodshed.</p><p>He betrayed his uncle for his uncle’s crown. He watched his father perish at his uncle’s hands. He saw his mother’s bruises heal, and blossom, and heal again, and blossom again, until eventually she dragged herself and her children away from the perilous safety of the Fire Palace into the secure uncertainty of the outside world.</p><p>He touches his scar, the mark of his shame, of his father’s hatred, of his failure as a son, and he thinks of Katara, three years old and already doomed to death simply because of her power. He thinks of himself as a young child, in terror of his father’s voice, always inferior to Azula, always only a step away from disaster, always unwanted, unlucky, unhappy, trained since birth to harden his body in preparation for the Eternal War against the Earth King in Ba Sing Se.</p><p>“What do you want, Zuko?” She asks. What does he want? What should he want? He’s the Fire Lord, uncrowned and unrecognized, but still the heir by blood and custom. What he wants, he can have. So what is it? The Earth Kingdom? He’s met the dignitaries, he’s walked the streets of Omashu and Gaoling, he’s seen the children playing beneath shady trees, dressed in green and gold. The Water Tribes? He can’t imagine ruling the poles would bring him any joy. </p><p>He’s Agni’s Heir, born to conquer, born to light the future of his people. He should want the world; the world belongs to him by right.</p><p>But seated on the rock warmed by the sun, his stomach filled with stolen salt pork and cold water, what he should want and what he does want do not align, like teeth knocked out of place by a fist.</p><p>______________________________</p><p>She pulls him from a dream about his mother’s melting flesh. He wakes her from a nightmare about her village burning. He isn’t sure exactly when they started sharing their terrors, but after he tells her, his heart feels lighter, and after she tells him, she sleeps more easily.</p><p>She shows him how to twist wire into a fishing lure. He warms a concave rock until it glows red hot, and cooks the fish on the stone, and they eat well for the first time in two weeks.</p><p>He falls asleep with the songs of her people snagged in his mind. He awakens to her humming sacred hymns to Agni.</p><p>They have a competition to retell each other’s stories in the style of their people.</p><p>In Katara’s version of Orahama’s tale, the woman marries the brother she loves, and her scorned lover casts himself into the sea and becomes a solitary dogshark.</p><p>In his version of the Moon’s birth, Agni searches all of heaven for a wife of equal radiance, but finding none, takes the flat mirror of the ocean, and casts his glow upon it, and weds the weaker version of himself.</p><p>Katara dislikes this story. He thinks it is very artful in its combination of the ancient mythic motifs of love and conquest. She douses him in water, and he lights the tip of her walking stick on fire.</p><p>He counts down to the autumn equinox, the sun’s passage overhead growing more elliptical as monsoon season settles with a vengeance over the land.</p><p>The rains fall in the afternoons, turning the ground to muck, and drenching them and their possessions. The higher up they climb into the mountains, the colder the nights, and the more vital their need for winter supplies becomes. When they sight the smoke rising from a mountain village, they agree to make the detour.</p><p>______________________________</p><p>The moon is nearing fullness when they walk into the village, and most of the shops are shuttered, but a lone inn bleeds light onto the muddy road, its windows yellow with candleflame and its sign swinging in the autumn wind.</p><p>“I want a hot bath and a good meal and a warm bed,” Katara says. Zuko weighs the rubies in their pouch consideringly. It may attract suspicion for them to pay in jewels, but the mountain people, at least according to his uncle, who married into one of their oldest clans, keep their noses out of each other’s business.</p><p>“I do too,” he says.</p><p>He holds the door open for her, and she enters, and he follows. It’s warm inside, the walls are a cheery butterflower yellow, and a fire crackles in the grate. A few men sit around before the fire, nursing beer, and one looks up at the newcomers, then looks back down at his Pai Sho board. </p><p>“Welcome, strangers,” the innkeeper says. She is an old woman, with grey eyes and grey hair and a wrinkled face, and when she walks, Zuko sees evidence of a bad break poorly set in the way she carries her left leg. Still, despite the old injury, her movements are lithe.</p><p>“Good evening, Madam,” Zuko begins, and Katara elbows him in the stomach.</p><p>“Hi,” Katara says. “We’re in town for the night, and need a bed-” she seems to think through her words, because she very quickly amends, “-two beds, and baths, and dinner.” The woman is obviously a rustic, because she grabs Katara’s chin with her hand, and raises it to peer into her eyes. Her gaze falls on Zuko, and her frown deepens into a scowl.</p><p>“Of course,” she says. “Payment up front.” Zuko dislikes the glint in her eyes, but he’s hungry and tired and the request is fair enough. Katara pulls out one of her rubies, gleaming, red, vibrant, and the woman takes it. “What am I supposed to do with this?” She asks.</p><p>“It’s real,” Katara says. “You can sell it, or keep it, or-”</p><p>“It’s good for one night,” the innkeep says. “No more. Two beds, two baths, two dinners, breakfast tomorrow.”</p><p>“Alright,” she says.</p><p>“And you have to help me harvest my garden in the morning.”</p><p>“Then you’ll have to house us another evening, because we have business to accomplish.”</p><p>“Deal,” the woman says. Zuko shivers under her gaze, and her hands, when she places them on his arm, are clammy. “Are you a bender, Boy?”</p><p>“I am,” he says. There’s no point in lying. His body temperature runs too hot for him to be anything but feverish or firebender.</p><p>“Don’t do it in this inn,” she orders, her mouth twisting.</p><p>“Yes, Madam,” he says. She seems unsatisfied, but she gestures for them to follow her.</p><p>______________________________</p><p>Zuko bathes and shaves and soaks in hot water, then eats a cold dinner alone, since sometime between her bath and his, Katara situated herself with the Pai Sho players near the fire. He hadn’t picked her for an avid gamer, but she bends over the board, her hands moving swiftly, and he can tell she’s in a deep discussion with her opponent.</p><p>He eats the underdone firehen and drinks the thin beer, and he watches as Katara’s gleaming white teeth catch the reflected candlelight, as she tosses her head back in laughter, or pulls her hair over her shoulder, like she always does when she’s thinking. She taps her fingers, she purses her mouth, she rolls her eyes, and then she looks over to him (and he looks away, because he isn’t watching her, he’s just drawn to the flickering fire), and says something to her companion.</p><p>The man in question is about double his age, his hair beginning to recede, his cheeks already lined by long years of hard labor. Zuko feels himself observed by the stranger, and the hairs on the back of his neck prickle, and when Katara finishes her game, she and the stranger rise as one and vanish out the front door of the inn, without even a backwards glance at him.</p><p>He’s not jealous. That would be irrational. He’s only worried for her safety in the dead of night in a strange village with a strange man, and he’s upset that she’d jeopardize their mission for-</p><p>for what?  </p><p>The question catches him, sinks its teeth into his neck and its claws into his sides, and holds him down. Surely she wouldn’t… the man is so much older than she, and… </p><p>Zuko isn’t aware of having risen until he’s up and striding towards the door. The street outside is deserted, and the rain is drizzling down. He swears and hurries down the lightless avenue, listening for Katara’s laugh, or low, merry tones. She could be in danger, she could misunderstand the man’s intentions, he should find her before she gets into trouble.</p><p>He doesn’t. He wanders the entire village, until he’s soaked to the bone and shivering, and when he comes up empty, he storms back to the inn, drips water all over the floor, and sits himself before the unlit fire in their room, drowning in black thoughts. </p><p>When she returns late that night, he leaps up almost before she’s through the door.</p><p>“Where were you?” He demands.</p><p>“Why, miss me?” She’s infuriating, she’s obviously incapable of grasping the danger of the situation, of grasping her own frailty.</p><p>“No,” he snaps. “But you can’t go running off into with strange men-”</p><p>“As it happens,” she says. “He is not a stranger to me. We have a mutual friend.”</p><p>“I see,” he says, although he doesn't. It's surely not irrational to be upset that his wife is fraternizing with commoners, beer-drunk, in a seedy inn.</p><p>“We’re staying in town for the next few days,” she says. “You should probably find boots that fit, and winter cloaks, and food for the rest of the march over the mountains.” Normally, he’d tell her that he’s the Crown Prince, and he’s the one who makes decisions. But it’s very late, and he is very tired, and he’s so relieved that she wasn’t robbed or raped or murdered that he merely huffs and crawls into his bed.</p><p>He listens to her breathing deepen, and he slips off to sleep.</p><p>He awakens to her touching his shoulder, perhaps three hours before dawn.</p><p>“What?” He groans.</p><p>“Move over,” she says. “It’s freezing without a fire.” And once again, he’s too tired to argue with her. He rolls over, and she curls up next to him, shivering. Her skin is as cold as ice.</p><p>“S’not that bad,” he says.</p><p>“It’s snowing,” she whispers, and presses into him.</p><p>He inches his temperature upward, and she sighs contentedly, her nose buried in his neck, her chest pressed against his chest.</p><p>She stops shivering, her body warms, and still she remains twined around him. He expects that he won’t sleep another wink, but he does, without a single dream.</p><p>______________________________</p><p>By the time he rises, Katara and their host have vanished, so he spends the next morning working in the innkeeper’s garden (there is indeed some snow, as Katara had said), harvesting the last of the autumn harvest, and he spends the afternoon buying supplies for the journey overland. His rubies garner him a few strange looks, but the people mind their own business, and he minds his, although he cannot help but be surprised at the wariness the villagers show, even to each other.</p><p>Perhaps it’s the coming full moon that disquiets them. </p><p>It’s late when he finally begins the walk back to the inn, and when the moon rises, he hears a cracking sound and turns around, a fire in his palm.</p><p>Against his will, his right leg moves, and then his left, and then his right again. </p>
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<a name="section0009"><h2>9. I Could a Tale Unfold Whose Lightest Word Would Harrow up Thy Soul, Freeze Thy Young Blood</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>From birth, he has been a vessel for the power of the state. He has enjoyed moments of freedom, brief respites from duty, but since he has been conscious of his body, he has been conscious of his role within it. He was taught how to bow to his grandfather before he could pronounce Azulon’s name. He was trained in bending before the spark of living fire settled in his eyes. </p><p>He had failed in his duty as a son by refusing to recognize Ozai as his father. He had been young, but he had known better. Sons did as their fathers ordered, and he had disobeyed. The burn was just, the action viciously symbolic. The Fire Nation had never had a Fire Lord so disastrously maimed by his own element.</p><p>He had been ten.</p><p>______________________________</p><p>While healing from the wound his father gave him, Zuko had wondered whether his uncle would send him away, since his imperfect body was a mark of shame on the Line of Agni. But his uncle had done no such thing. Instead he had visited, once a day, and had smoothed down his hair and inquired about the bandages or the food or the physicians. Zuko can only remember bits and snatches of the months following his maiming. Mostly, he remembers the constant pain, eased only occasionally by poppy-seed tea that left him with vivid hallucinations of cavernous pits and oceans of fire, and the great volcano in whose embrace Caldera City lies, awakening with a shudder and a plume of grey smoke.</p><p>But when at last the bandages around his eye were peeled off, and he was left with a pink, still-oozing scar, his uncle had called him to the women’s gardens, and had sat him down underneath a tamarin tree, and had sat before him, regal in his royal colors, his topknot held in place by the Fire Lord’s pin.</p><p>“Prince Zuko,” his uncle had said, his voice heavy, and his posture weary. “The role and the duties of Crown Prince have fallen to you.” Zuko remembers numbness, remembers the way his head listed to the right, as though weighted by water. Belatedly, far too removed from promptness to be polite, his manners had occurred to him, and he had leapt upright (his balance still off, the sun in the gardens a knife of pure agony to his left eye), and knelt before his uncle, and had made to press his still-raw face into the earth.</p><p>But his uncle had stopped his bow, had gathered him up in his arms as though he were only a child (he was a child, he was only eleven, how could he have merited either his father’s punishment or his uncle’s responsibility?) and had held him to his chest, and Zuko had felt the burning hot exhalation of his uncle’s breath, and had flinched away…<br/> <br/>and his uncle had released him.</p><p>“A Crown Prince has duties beyond those of a normal member of the Royal Family,” his uncle had said. “Duties that you will grow into slowly, Prince Zuko. You will learn to speak the old language fluently, and you will spend a year in a monastery with the Fire Sages, learning the intricacies of our religion. You will tour the countryside and meet the people and learn about their problems, from floods and famines to lame ostrich-horses, and everything in between. You will master your bending, you will work diligently to ensure that your forms are above reproach. You will master the seven sacred instruments, and the fifteen modes of etiquette, and the nine fields of study.” Zuko nodded along to his uncle’s words, not truly listening, only paying attention to the intonation so he knew when to relax, and when to bend his head into a ritual bow. “You will learn about our people, and learn to love them,” Iroh had said, his voice distant. “And you will help me, Zuko, won’t you?” </p><p>His name without his title caught him off guard. He knew how to respond to questions when they were phrased correctly, with meaningful intonation or sharp titles. His own name, stripped of ornamentation, was alien to him. He struggled to find a response, and so remained silent.</p><p>“The world has been at war for a century, Zuko,” his uncle had said. “A century of killing and being killed, our people and strangers, good people and bad. I lost Lu Ten to the struggle, but I swear, he will be the last. I have sent ambassadors to the Earth Kingdom and the Water Tribes, and I have asked them to hold a parley. We are going to fashion a New Peace.” Zuko remained silent, waiting, waiting. “A Crown Prince has duties, to his Fire Lord, and to his nation. Are you dutiful, Zuko?” Again, a question without his title, a question he had no guide to answering. </p><p>He had bowed instead, his manners perfect, and his uncle had sighed in a way that almost made him sound disappointed, and raised his hands, and Zuko had all but stumbled backwards, feeling the burning heat of his father’s hand pressed against his eye-</p><p>and his uncle had noticed, and had lowered his hands.</p><p>“The body of the Fire Lord is the body of the Fire Nation,” Iroh had said, and Zuko had touched his scar, feeling his hairless eyebrow, his melted cheek. “And so, although you will have power, you will have to sublimate your desires to the needs of your people. I am going to contract your marriage, Prince Zuko.” Zuko dipped his head, the implications of marriage still vague enough, and the prospect of being wed still distant enough that he did not feel even the twinge of objection. “I promise I will select a young woman close to your age, one who will be dutiful and wise, a girl raised from infancy to aid her husband in his duties.” Zuko had not known how to respond. “She will not be Fire Nation,” Iroh had said, softly.</p><p>Zuko wanted his mother. His mother never sat him down underneath a tree and tested his manners, his mother never spoke words that sounded like treason, only they were from the Fire Lord’s mouth, so they couldn’t be.</p><p>“I know you have been raised to view the other nations harshly,” Iroh had said. “But we cannot have peace without sacrifice, and the sacrifice that will be demanded is your body, and the Princess Azula's.”</p><p>“Azula’s going to be a general,” he had said, because that much was obvious. It was all she ever talked about, even from when she could toddle, she was commanding men in her high, child’s voice. </p><p>“The war is over, Zuko,” his uncle had said. “The world has no more need of generals. It needs people willing to offer themselves up, their bodies and their minds, to their nation.”</p><p>He had been eleven.</p><p>______________________________</p><p>“It is a mark of disgrace for a firebender, let alone a member of the royal family, to carry weapons, my son,” his mother had said.</p><p>“But Mom, please, please. I promise I won’t tell, I won’t wear them in public, I just want to be a swordsman like Ara Ira in <em>The Satrap’s Council</em>, please-”</p><p>“My darling, you know I can’t hire a swordmaster for you. The burden of tradition weighs on the back of the Crown Prince, and you would shame yourself and your house by resorting to a weapon besides your fire.”</p><p>“But Mom-”</p><p>“That’s enough.” Zuko touched his scar, aware of how pliant his mother became when he reminded her of the visible proof of his love for her. She sighed, and her face twisted.</p><p>“Please?”</p><p>“I’ll speak with the Fire Lord,” she said, and Zuko all but leapt in happiness, dreaming of sharp blades and skillful parries. “He will probably say no,” she warned, but Zuko was not listening.</p><p>He had been twelve.</p><p>His uncle did not say no.</p><p>______________________________</p><p>“The purpose of the marriage bed is the production of heirs for the continuance of the royal line,” his uncle was saying. Zuko had pulled his hair over his eyes and was slumped in his chair in a manner entirely unbecoming of the Crown Prince. He knew how babies happened, he wasn’t an idiot, and he definitely did not need his uncle (it was easier to think of Iroh as his uncle when he dressed casually, and went without the Fire Lord’s pin in his hair) to tell him the details. </p><p>“Fire Lord-” Zuko pleaded, feeling the redness in his face.</p><p>“Prince Zuko, our duties mean we must endure occasional discomfort for the greater good. I am merely telling you what I wish I had been told when I was your age. I married when I was quite old, since I desired military glory, and my father had-” Iroh paused and looked at him as though he were a skittish ostrich-horse. “My father had another son. But you must marry young, almost as soon as you attain majority.”</p><p>“I know,” Zuko said, in the sort of tone his father would have slapped him for, but the Fire Lord merely quirked his eyebrow at Zuko’s poor manners.</p><p>“It is likely, my prince, that your bride will be terrified of you. Princess Yue is from a great and noble line of mighty warriors, but her people suffered many things at the hands of our people, horrible, inexcusable things.” Zuko wasn’t sure anyone had ever been terrified of him. Certainly he’d been afraid of others, but he was a bad bender and only a passable swordsman, and completely useless at intimidation.</p><p>“No one’s afraid of me, Fire Lord.”</p><p>“It’s not you that they are afraid of, but what you represent.”</p><p>He had been fourteen.</p><p>______________________________</p><p>Zuko had been sent to the Fire Sages and sequestered in the sacred monastery in the Flaming Hills, he had been stripped of his ornamental robes and his elaborate hairpieces and his golden jewelry, and had been put to backbreaking work, without respite or praise, work from dawn to dusk, and meditation from dusk to midnight.</p><p>The Fire Sages were unsympathetic to his struggles, as he labored to accomplish a simulacrum of the Three Virtues of Agni, strength, endurance, and obedience. He moved a mountain of stones from one side of the abbey to the other, hundreds of them, for months, and when he finished, he looked at what he had accomplished and realized he had failed to actually do anything worth doing.</p><p>He did, however, have the entirety of the <em>Agni Pustak</em> memorized, because it had been read to him, and he had been forced to recite it back, or else be beaten until he bled with the long, thin cudgels the Fire Sages carried.</p><p>Next, Zuko had been sent away from the monastery, alone, out into the hills, with only the flame in his hands and a loincloth round his legs, not even shoes for his feet, and with only his breathing to keep him warm, he scoured the countryside for the hundred beasts that Agni had devoured, and he had brought them back to the monastery, and they had been burned alive.</p><p>Insects, worms, fish, spiders, snakes, pumacats, koalasheep,  domestic animals, working animals, he dragged them all back, one at a time, naked in the miserable rains of a Fire Nation winter.</p><p>What took Agni a single night took him the entire winter, and half of spring.</p><p>The hundredth animal was man, so he brought himself back, and they stripped him even of his loincloth, and (he did not fear fire, he knew how to avoid burns, he was not a child) he passed through the sages’ Sacred Flames, and when he came out the other side, he collapsed, and he did not rise for a full week.</p><p>When he rose, he was set to following a Fire Sage, and was commanded to obey his every whim, and so for the rest of spring and most of summer, Zuko cleaned pots and did laundry and lit fires and swept bare stone and recited sacred poems, and when at last the year was accomplished and he was once again robed in gold and crimson, he did not recognize the hardened body that faced him in the mirror.</p><p>He had been nineteen. </p><p>______________________________</p><p>And then, word had come from the North Pole that his intended wife had broken the sacred covenant of their betrothal, and had instead run off with the feckless chieftain’s son from the south, and Zuko had wondered if, instead of the work of peace, his uncle would set him to the labor of war.</p><p>He had become adept at bending while away, and the flames came to him naturally. He had achieved mastery years ago, but the long winter in the cold had taught him to regulate his breath, and he could even, to the enthusiastic applause of his uncle, produce flames of fire from his mouth. Normally, as the Crown Prince, he would have taken a sacred pilgrimage to the abandoned temple of the Sun Warriors, and spent a month in meditation and in isolation, contemplating the origin of his element, but the looming crisis with the Water Tribes prevented his absence.</p><p>His uncle demanded that the girl be given, tainted or no, and Zuko, who had not so much as touched a girl since his formal betrothal, seethed at the indignation and the debasement of his honor, and in a flash of rebellion that ought to have been drilled out of him by the Fire Sages (and maybe if he had actually been permitted to make his pilgrimage in peace it would have been) he took one girl to bed, and then another, and then a third. He was not subtle.</p><p>But his uncle had not said anything, and Zuko’s mind rebelled against his body, and pushed couplets from the <em>Agni Putsak</em> at him when he wanted to lose himself in lust, and so he stopped. He’d learned, by then, the dangers of an unmastered flame.</p><p>And then he’d been offered a replacement, the chieftain’s daughter from the Southern Water Tribe, a girl of equal birth (he knew the differing trade revenues, he knew exactly how poor her tribe was in relation to its sister-tribe) and higher virtue, and his uncle had said,</p><p>“This is not a decision you have the luxury of making, Prince Zuko. We must choose the way of peace, even at the expense of pride. I have summoned the girl, and you will wed her.”</p><p>Zuko, knowing it was useless to do anything but acquiesce, had acquiesced.</p><p>He had been twenty.</p><p>______________________________</p><p>And so, when Zuko’s legs reject his mind’s power over them, and move on their own, his first thought is, <em>it would have been much more convenient if someone had always been able to do this</em> and his second thought is, <em>This is going to be a horrible way to die</em> and his third thought is, <em>I hope Katara will take time to mourn me.</em> </p><p>He fights against his own blood, he digs into his chi and searches for something to grab hold of, some part of himself that was not and cannot be mastered, but he has never had his will, not truly. He has always allowed himself to be controlled by another. </p><p>And then he hears a shout (he cannot turn to look, his body is frozen) and then another, and then Katara’s voice, frigid (he knows her well enough to know the sound of her terror), and then his limbs loosen and he sinks to the ground, and he finds he cannot move, cannot regain control of himself, can only watch the spurt of water, then of ice, from the corner of his eye, and then he hears a long, blood-curdling scream (Katara!) his mind shouts, and he realizes that he cannot lose the girl in the same instant that she kneels over him.</p><p>“Zuko,” she murmurs, and she touches his face, and he is frozen, immobile, but warmth blossoms where she lays her hand against him. “Zuko, Zuko, I’m so sorry. Please, please breathe.” His lungs are burning, but his body will not respond, he chokes on nothing, and his eyes blur and his chest aches, it burns,</p><p>And then he feels the impulse stealing over him, and he sees Katara with her fingers splayed, and she forces his lungs to move, and she brings breath through his nose, and he is gasping, coughing, and by the time she draws her control away he is curled in a ball with tears streaming from his eyes, able to breathe for himself, but only barely, because every breath he draws hurts, and he does not feel free, he has never felt free, he has always had someone mastering him, controlling him, and he has been lucky his entire life, because everything he suffered and endured has been gentle compared to the kind of mastery his people inflicted on hers.</p><p>And his mother is dead, and his uncle, and Azula, poor, poor Azula, is lost, she has spent her whole life like he has spent his, bound to another’s whims.</p><p>He expects Katara to snap at him, to tell him to comport himself like a prince, to restrain his tears, to control himself. But she only runs her fingers through his hair, and holds his head on her lap, and when at last his sobs subside to hiccoughs, she draws him upright and embraces him.</p><p>“What happened?” He asks, his throat dry, and she holds him to her, and tells the long, sad story of the innkeeper.</p><p>He looks at the woman’s body in the dawn light, and he pities her.</p><p>“We should dig a grave,” he says, and so they do. She fetches shovels from the inn’s garden shed, and in silence, they make a hole wide enough for the woman’s body, and Zuko lowers her in.</p><p>“There’s a song,” Katara says. “To guide her spirit.” Her voice trembles as she chants the words, and Zuko piles earth over the only other waterbender from her tribe that Katara has ever known.</p><p>“Why?” He asks her, and she does not meet his eyes.</p><p>“You’re not the kind of prince that we want dead.” And his blood ices again, and he sinks to the ground. </p><p>He is twenty one years old.</p><p>“I won’t,” he says. “Whatever you want from me, I won’t do it. I can’t. I’m not going to be Fire Lord.” She looks at him, and her eyes are wide and blue and as beautiful as the sea in the moonlight. His heart twists and he knows he’s a fool, a sap, an idiot, but when she touches him his pulse races, and he wants, he wants and he cannot have.</p><p>“Zuko,” she breathes, and his name on her lips is sweeter than the badgerhoney his mother used to feed him by the spoonful when he was younger.</p><p>“I won’t,” he says. He knows he’s about to cry again, but he can’t help himself. “You asked what I want and I don’t know, but I know I don’t want this! So if you want that from me, I’m sorry. You may as well kill me, because I’m not going to be a prince.”</p><p>“Okay,” she says. She won’t meet his eyes. He braces himself for her water choking his lungs, but she only wraps her arms around him, and rests her head on his shoulder. He is shivering, despite digging a grave, despite being a firebender. Her skin is warmer than his. “Okay, that’s okay. There’s a ship, one that will take us south. Will you go south with me, Zuko?” She asks.</p><p>He can answer. He can choose.</p><p>“Okay,” he says, and she holds him, until the sun rises, until he is warm again.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0010"><h2>10. I Was the More Deceived</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>"The ship is from the Northern Water Tribe," she says. "It's a trade ship, although the captain has declared that he's willing to take Southern Water Tribe citizens back to the pole. We will have passage." He does not ask how she knows this, and she does not offer the information. He assumes it must have something to do with the Pai Sho player in the inn. </p><p>They retrieve their supplies, return the shovel, and set off at a soldier's jog up into the foothills.</p><p>Moving his body becomes habit. His lungs gasp in air and exhale steam, when the rains start and the going becomes difficult, he and Katara shelter themselves beneath their oilcloth, and if he shakes, it is only from exhaustion, and if she presses too close to him, it is only from cold.</p><p>They stop for the night long after sunset, they eat the salted koalasheep strips and drink the water Katara calls from the air. He builds a small fire, and sets it burning, and sits down before it, feeling the warmth of his reflected element. He reaches out to the fire, and feeds it his own energy, and the flames go from a cool red to a hot yellow.</p><p>Katara sits beside him, and begins to unbraid her hair. During the day it is dark and lovely, but presently it gleams with reflected firelight, each strand catching and casting off a glimmer of the flame. When it falls loose around her shoulders, it is as though she is veiled in a rippling, reflective waterfall.</p><p>“I won’t do it again,” she says. “Bloodbending. I had to do it to save you, but I won’t do it again, I can’t.” Her tone is tortured, and his heart twists, and he thinks of the way Iroh had pressed his head and hands into the earth of Ozai’s grave, as though he hoped to will his brother alive again.</p><p>“My uncle can produce lightning,” he says. “He’s a much more powerful bender than I am, and he can do it as easy as breathing. Azula too. After he killed my fa- Ozai, he didn’t, for a very long time. I think at first he couldn’t, because to do it, your mind has to be focused, and your spirit has to be at peace. And he wasn’t, for a long time. My mother said- said he had nightmares, about Ozai, and about Lu Ten, his son. But he went away on pilgrimage, left the council in charge for a month, and when he returned he was different, more at ease. He used to do it occasionally when I was younger, mostly to make the air sparkle and your hair stand on end, just like real lightning, but even when he got back he refused. He got furious at Azula too, when he saw her practicing.</p><p>“But then we went to inspect the navy ships, and an officer’s daughter slipped off the dock during the paen to Agni, and because of the noise, no one heard her scream. They fished her out after ten minutes, and they got the water out her lungs, but her heart wouldn’t beat, even though they compressed her chest. So my uncle shouldered them aside, and pressed his finger to her chest, and shocked her, and her heart started again, and he saved her life.”</p><p>“Is that a true story?” She asks, her voice uncertain. He looks at her, and her blue eyes are murky with unshed tears.</p><p>He hasn’t ever killed anyone, at least, not directly. The Crown Prince is traditionally supposed to execute traitors, and with Zhao’s rebellion, there has never been a shortage, but his uncle always refused to let him burn them alive, and he had secretly been relieved, because he didn’t want to do it, didn’t even know if he could.</p><p>“Of course it’s true,” he says.</p><p>“It’s just, my people sometimes tell stories instead of teaching lessons. Like if a little girl keeps running off instead of doing her chores, her grandmother may tell her a story about a woman who ignored her duties and got eaten by a tigerseal.”</p><p>“Oh,” Zuko says. “Well, it’s true. When I spent my year at the monastery, the Fire Sages taught me that all bending is neutral. What it’s used for, the intentions of the bender, that’s what matters.”</p><p>“I wish I didn’t know how to do it,” she bursts out. “All my life, I wanted a bending master from my tribe, someone to teach me my heritage, but this isn’t- I don’t want this to be my inheritance.”</p><p>“I’m sorry,” he says, because he doesn’t know what else to say, because it’s his people who arranged the circumstances for her to learn the dreadful skill. She leans into him, and they sit in silence for a time, watching the flames flicker.</p><p>They lay out their bedrolls and fall asleep before the small fire, but Zuko dreams of his father’s flaming palm and his mother’s bruises and his uncle in the guise of a great red dragon, and his body moving contrary to his will, and the third time he wakes with a start and a muffled scream, Katara speaks, her voice tender. </p><p>“When my brother and I were traveling, I had bad dreams. And my brother used to let me sleep with my back to his, and it helped a lot. Sometimes just hearing another person breathe is all I needed.”</p><p>“Okay,” Zuko says, hoarsely. Katara leaves her bedroll, and slips into his. She wedges her body against his own, she lays her head on his chest and wraps her arm around him, anchoring herself to him, or perhaps anchoring him to the earth.</p><p>“You’re warm,” she says. “The babies are going to love you.” He feels himself flush from his neck to the roots of his hair.</p><p>“What babies?”</p><p>“In the South Pole, of course. You’ll meet my tribe, we’re much larger than we used to be, and once the little kids figure out that you’re a living, breathing furnace, they will never let you alone. The winter months are viciously cold, and even the summer isn’t exactly warm, so we spend our evenings in a communal lodge, telling stories and singing songs, and the kids are passed from hand to hand, so the mothers can have a break, and so they learn to love every member of the tribe. But they prefer people who run hot.”</p><p>“Oh,” he says. He tries to imagine holding a baby, and he can’t.</p><p>“Do you like kids?”</p><p>“Um, I guess? Azula was cute, but I was only two years older than her, so I don’t really remember, and-”</p><p>“Zuko,” she says, her tone shocked. “You have seen a baby before, right?”</p><p>“Well,” he says. “Obviously I’ve witnessed the presentation of the youth to the Fire Lord, but those are mostly five year olds. And-”</p><p>“I can’t wait to watch you with them,” she says, and her voice is positively smug.</p><p>“Will your tribe… won’t they be… I’m Fire Nation.” He’s aware that he is hardly being eloquent, but the rational half of him can’t find a way to phrase his question except for are your people really going to welcome the grandson of the man who practically exterminated them and the irrational part of him is currently consumed by the warmth of Katara’s hand on his chest, and the way her body is melded to his.</p><p>“Well, sure,” she says. “But you’re mine, so that doesn’t really matter so much.”</p><p>“What does that mean, I’m yours?” He asks.</p><p>“In the north, a woman joins her husband’s household,” Katara says. “But in the south, it’s the opposite. We trace our lineage through our mothers, and our fathers leave their tribes for our mothers’ tribes.”</p><p>“Oh,” he says. He can’t imagine belonging to his wife, any more than he can imagine not belonging to his uncle, but the way she says it makes the practice sound natural. </p><p>“Besides, my father listens to my council,” she says. “Which is a good thing for him too, considering all of Sokka’s stupid ideas.” But where he expects to hear the venomous tone of a slighted sibling, he hears only fondness, and he wonders, not for the first time, how her brother could leave her to the whims of the Fire Nation.</p><p>“Do you resent your brother?” He asks her. “For making you marry me?”</p><p>“It’s more complicated than that,” she says. She traces little circles on his chest, and he should tell her to stop, because he’s only a man, and she’s pressed flush against him, and he can’t help natural reactions to her proximity, but her touch is so pleasant and her voice so soothing that he does not want to interrupt her. “What happened with Yue… it’s really not like you think it is. It wasn’t Sokka’s fault, or Yue’s, or a-, or mine. Something else happened.”</p><p>“What?” She nuzzles her nose into his neck, and he feels the edge of his arousal sharpen.</p><p>“I can’t say,” she says. “I would if I could, I promise, but I can’t. Someday, as soon as- as the world is healed.” He huffs, and wonders if he can wheedle it out of her, but he knows the burden of secrets, and it’s not like he has more than a passing interest in the subject. If she doesn’t care to relate whatever sordid tale of lust and romance occurred between her brother and his betrothed, he doesn’t care to listen. “You’ll like the South Pole,” she says, and her voice is melodic. “The sea and the sky and the ice are all blue, and in summer the sun spins round the horizon without ever dipping beneath it-” her voice is soft and soothing, and her body is warm and comforting when pressed against his. Eventually, her words falter and she loosens her grip, and he listens to the way her heart pulses in her chest, and the way her lungs gather breath, and he sinks, slowly, into sleep, reassured by her solidity in his arms. </p><p>______________________________</p><p>The cold gets worse, the higher up they go. There’s a ship at anchor in Minato, which lies on the eastern coast and is perhaps a two week footslog through the mountains, easy enough in summer, but miserable during the winter. Still, Zuko and Katara have boots that fit, and warm woolen cloaks, and enough food that they do not have to hunt or fish unless they choose to.</p><p>Katara keeps their path clear of the snow that filters down from the heavens, and Zuko modulates his breath to keep himself warm. </p><p>They spar occasionally, but the travel through the mountains is much more taxing, and they rarely have the energy to do much more than eat dinner and collapse into their bedrolls. </p><p>She does not even bother unrolling her own anymore. She simply slips into his, and draws his warmth into her.</p><p>One evening she complains of a stiff shoulder, and his fingers find the knot and he gently undoes it. The position is awkward, she is too close for him to have good leverage, but she leans into him, and he tells her, when she asks how he knows exactly how to knead the sore muscle, that his father would occasionally discuss the old epics with him, if he rubbed his neck to soothe his stress.</p><p>He remembers the feeling of his father's skin beneath his fingers, the feverishly warm body of a firebender. He had always complained that Zuko's fingers were too cold.</p><p>Her skin is brown and lovely, the color of sun-warmed stone, and her muscles shift beneath his hands, and the strange bubbling feeling in his heart threatens to overwhelm him. He finds himself wishing that he could halt the sun’s passage, and live out his days beside her, his fingers teasing tension from her body, his warmth leaching into her.</p><p>She sighs into his touch.</p><p>“Katara,” he says. All the words he wants to say are bunched up in his mouth, twisted round his vocal cords and squeezing his esophagus, slowly suffocating him.</p><p>“Hmm?” But he can’t. The knot in his throat makes loosening the words impossible. “Zuko?” Her tone is curious, but she remains relaxed in his arms. </p><p>“Nothing,” he says. </p><p>______________________________</p><p>They arrive at the port town of Minato six weeks into autumn, and they find lodging in an overcrowded inn, jam-packed with travelers from Ichi and Kogai and even Caldera, all attempting to flee the conflict that can no longer be described as anything but civil war. Minato abuts the deep natural harbor formed by the sinuous curve of the Hi-Shima Mountains rising from the ocean, and during the Hundred Years War was the staging ground for eastern and southern invasions alike. During the New Peace it had grown into a thriving trade hub, since it is situated favorably for both Earth Kingdom junks and Water Tribe rigs to dock, replenish, and head onwards.</p><p>Zhao’s fleet had threatened conquest earlier, they are told by a garrulous old man, but a hurricane had scattered the boats, and he had retreated rather than risk the storm’s wrath. Instead, the city is mastered by the Loyalists (loyal to whom? Iroh? Ozai? Azulon? Himself?), and the Loyalist banner, a quadruple-tongued flame, and Loyalist soldiers, black-clad and masked and armed, litter the streets. The innkeeper strenuously warns against breaking the sundown curfew.</p><p>There’s a public gallows in the center of the town square, even though Iroh had banned all public punishment as part of his Beneficent Concessions.</p><p>There’s a whipping post smeared with fresh blood.</p><p>The harbor is crammed with ships, and the streets are packed with refugees desperate to buy passage.</p><p>Gold and jewels form the primary currency, and Iroh’s paper tender is all but worthless. A bed and a warm meal costs a half palm of rubies. The stew is thin, the meat stringy and innutritious, and outside the entrance to the inn, a woman begs every nursing mother to please, please suckle her child. Her milk has dried up, and her baby is starving.</p><p>Katara clutches his hand so tightly that he loses circulation. </p><p>Zuko starts when his vision snags on a huddle of children dressed in unseasonable summer clothes that had once been very expensive. He recognizes them as the six sons of Vice Admiral Teito, three sets of twins delivered eighteen months apart. The oldest two are seven, but despite their youth, they bear matching scars across their faces, the thin mark of a fire whip. One of the younger twins, perhaps two, presses against his mother, Lady Suzuran, and Zuko realizes with a sick, sinking sensation that she is pregnant. The Vice Admiral is not with them.</p><p>There’s someone coughing in the corner, an awful, hacking sound that Zuko fears. His people will suffer when the plague comes, as it always comes during the lean years.</p><p>He is nervous of being recognized, but he and Katara are filthy, and everyone believes the Crown Prince is dead. Besides, no one’s much interested in the royal family. They’re concerned about their lost homes, the uprisings in the north, and in the colonies, the western hills alight with wildfire, the certainty of famine, the crops burned first by Zhao, then by the Loyalists, the seed corn either burned or eaten, the herds sick with pestilence, and the rumors of plague afflicting the eastern provinces.</p><p>Zuko’s heart twists as he listens to the tales, and beside him, Katara is morose. They sleep in a barracks style room, on a thin, filthy bed, pressed back to back. The others in the room stir and shift, the children cry for food, one cries for her mother in her father's arms. The man with the dry cough hacks, even in his sleep, and from the wet way he gasps, Zuko knows that he is coughing up blood.</p><p>In the middle of the night, he wakes up and finds Katara gone. The innkeeper’s warnings ring in his ears, and he prepares to rise and look for her. </p><p>When he rolls over, he sees a spirit.</p><p>The spirit is robed in flowing crimson, and her head is veiled by white silk streaming from her broad weimao. Zuko realizes with a shudder that her face is smeared with something that might be clay, or might be blood, and there is a mist around her feet, and a glowing sphere of water in her hand, and she is bent over the man who had been coughing earlier. He gasps; the spirit snaps upright and for a moment he catches a glimpse of her pale white face. Then she turns back to her work, pressing the glowing ball of water into the man’s chest. He coughs raggedly, but his breathing eases, and he sinks more deeply into sleep. She draws the mist around her, and moves on to a boy with a broken arm, and once again, she forms a glowing disc, and presses it to the child’s arm.</p><p>He’s not a heathen, he believes in spirits. He’s pretty sure that he was aided by a spirit when accomplishing Agni’s Labor of Endurance, because he could not have found a pygmy ant without some divine favor. But there’s a difference between an ant and actually healing people of their injuries. And if spirits do exist, and do actually walk the earth, then why don’t they stop the war? If he was a spirit, he would have supported Iroh’s rule, rather than allow the country to collapse into chaos.</p><p>Perhaps, he thinks, spirits need to be entreated. He’s no Avatar, but he has spirit-blood in his body, and not just any spirit, but the Sun Spirit himself. Perhaps they will listen to him.</p><p>But he has nothing to offer in exchange, except, except,</p><p>-except his Crown Prince’s pin.</p><p>He draws the golden ornament from its place beside his skin, and he holds it in his hand. Avatar Roku used to wear it, as a symbol of Fire Lord Sozin’s favor. Spirits like being offered meaningful objects.</p><p>He rises from his bed, and follows the spirit’s trailing mist. She stands before the mother who was unable to nurse her infant, and Zuko waits for her to touch the woman, to heal her, but she only slips out the door, and into the night. He hurries after her, and sees her disappearing around an alleyway. </p><p>She moves swiftly, but he’s used to sneaking around city streets at night. He scales a low trellis and hoists himself onto a roof, plans an intersection point, and runs. He drops to the earth and waits, fearing he’d miscalculated, but the spirit appears from around a corner, and freezes when she sees him. He bends at the waist, his back parallel to the ground, his eyes lowered.</p><p>“I don’t know your name,” he says. “But I honor you. I am Agni’s Son.” He draws out the pin, and he kneels in the dirt. “I have nothing else to offer, no other means of entreating you, my lady, except for this pin, and what it symbolizes. Take it from me, my birthright, my inheritance, and in exchange, do not let my people perish.” He hears the spirit approach, and he waits for the deathly chill touch of her hands, but her fingers are warm when they wrap around his hand, and he glances upwards and sees vibrant blue eyes in a mask of white chalk and berry-red dye. He jerks to his feet, his stomach plummeting, and Katara reaches for him, but he evades her and flees back to the inn.</p><p>He sits on his narrow bed, and when, just before dawn, Katara returns with a bundle of rags and bruises beneath her eyes, he meets her gaze.</p><p>“You’re awake?” She asks.</p><p>“We should talk.” He says. She sighs, and he realizes she is exhausted. She collapses onto her pallet, and shuts her eyes.</p><p>“The <em>Nanook</em> is set to dock at midday, and intends to depart with the evening tide. Before it arrives, I want to rest.”</p><p>“Katara-” he starts, but she turns away from him. He wonders what other secrets she is hiding, and whether she will ever trust him enough to share them.</p><p>The memory of his ridiculous attempt at a bargain grates his pride. Even if she was a spirit, she wouldn’t have been swayed into action by an old gold pin.</p><p>Her secret stings more than it should. He has had plenty of secrets kept from him, but it wounds him to be so mistrusted. </p><p>He feels like he did when he was younger, fifteen and ignorant of love, convinced the way his mother and his uncle looked at each other was mere fraternal fondness. </p><p>He wasn’t even aware they shared a bedchamber, until  he had been sent to wake the Fire Lord and alert him to a surprise victory that Zhao’s light ships had scored over the imperial fleet. He hadn’t bothered knocking, since the imperial protocol dictated that the inferior party never place the superior in a position of excess labor. He expected to kneel before his uncle’s bed and rouse him with soft words.</p><p>Instead, he’d pushed the door open and found his mother’s head on his uncle’s bare chest, his hands stroking her hair, his gaze tender.</p><p>Discussing his mortification and embarrassment and shock later with Azula, she had given him one of her crooked smiles, and said, “Really, Zuzu, why do you think he favors you so highly?” And he had been left speechless. </p><p>His uncle did favor him, that much was true. He trained Zuko himself, while Azula attended the Royal Fire Academy for Girls. He allowed Zuko to learn steel weapons, even though that went against centuries of superstition and custom.</p><p>But if he wasn’t Ozai’s son, then he was a bastard, and he couldn’t be Fire Lord. And if he was Iroh’s son, that meant- he didn’t want to think about it, but that night, when he attempted to sleep, and he only managed to think of his uncle’s eyes widening in shock, and the way his mother had roused herself from her peaceful tranquility and had started guilty when she had seen him.</p><p>Zuko remembered the bruises that Ozai left on his mother’s pale skin. He had not seen her injured since she had fled the palace. If Iroh was good to her, then- then-</p><p>But he could not bring himself to forgive his mother for her betrayal. Iroh had killed her husband, it went entirely against nature and custom for her to- to lie with her head on his chest like she loved him.</p><p>When Zuko realized that sleep would not come, he had risen and dressed and made his way to the music hall. He had an examination on the tsungi horn in a month’s time, and his confidence in his ability to transpose into the eighth major scale was shaky at best. He lit two torches in the sconce, and lifted the large instrument, feeling its familiar warmth and weight. He’d expected to dislike learning the nine instruments required of the Crown Prince, but he’d actually found he enjoyed making music, particularly when he was privileged enough to accompany the Court Poet during feast evenings.</p><p>He played the paen to Agni, a simple song he’d known since childhood, and then he moved it up into the eighth, and introduced the kind of flourish his tutor preferred, more ostentatious than his uncle liked, but impressive both to hear and to observe.</p><p>He got the notes wrong, so he tried again, and then a third time. In the past, he would have tossed the instrument aside in annoyance, but the turmoil roiling within him was worse than his irritation at his failings. The fourth time, he made the same mistake, and he sighed. When Lu Ten had played, he had always played perfectly. If he was- if what Azula said was true, he must be a disappointment to Iroh.</p><p>“You’ve forgotten to compensate for the hidden sharp,” his uncle said, from the shadows. Zuko flushed, his mistake painfully obvious, but he had long ago stopped flinching when he was corrected. His uncle had never struck him in anger.</p><p>“I’m sorry,” he said, but he didn’t mean for missing the hidden sharp. </p><p>“I know how it looks,” his uncle said. “I know what you’re thinking, that your mother has spent her whole life bound to one or another of Azulon’s sons-”</p><p>“Fire Lord-” Zuko started, but his uncle reached upwards and touched the melted skin of Zuko’s scar, tenderly. Zuko could not read the liquid emotions that roiled in the man’s eyes.</p><p>“I love your mother,” Iroh said. Azula’s smile flashed in Zuko’s mind, and he could not bear his ignorance.</p><p>“Uncle,” he said, and his uncle looked at him, unoffended by his informality. “Azula said- she said you favored me.”</p><p>“Of course I favor you,” his uncle said, surprised. “I am fond of Azula too, of course, but it’s the doom of Sozin’s line to play favorites, and you are mine.” To hear him speak so frankly of his partiality made Zuko’s heart twist with guilt. He knew what it was to be the unwanted one, the outcast, the omen of ill fortune. Azula was only thirteen, still round with baby fat, still a girl, albeit one who could produce white lightning from her fingertips.</p><p>“She said- she implied it was- that I was- that you and my mother-”</p><p>“Ah,” Iroh said. He touched Zuko’s shoulder, his grip warm. “I suppose I should not be surprised that she harbors Ozai’s suspicions. My brother always did confide too much in her. Zuko felt his stomach plummeting, and he almost dropped the tsungi horn. He could hear his uncle’s words as though from a great distance, and he wanted to stop up his ears to avoid what he feared. “You are Ozai’s son,” Iroh said, his voice soft. “There is no doubt. If I had known how terribly he treated her back then-” his words faltered, and Zuko dipped his head. </p><p>He wasn’t Iroh’s, of course not, his lineage was certain, he was honorably conceived, his blood was above reproach.</p><p>But if he had been Iroh’s, then his own father would not have pressed a molten hand against his face, and melted his flesh like candle wax. Ozai would have done that, Ozai, who murdered Azulon and usurped his brother’s birthright, Ozai who would rightfully detest a bastard, and not his firstborn, his only son.</p><p>______________________________</p><p>Katara dozes another hour, before the stirring of the other guests in the room awakens her. She wraps her winter cloak around her, gathers up her possessions, and avoids Zuko’s gaze. He follows her down to the wharf, and they wait in the autumn chill for the Nanook to dock. In the midst of the noisy crowd, they can talk freely.</p><p>“What other secrets are you keeping?” </p><p>“None I can share.”</p><p>“You haven’t shared anything!” He hisses. “You’re a waterbender, you intended to murder me, you can magically heal people-”</p><p>“It’s not magic,” she says. “And I can’t just tell you all my secrets-”</p><p>“Why not?” He demands, and she looks at him, and his heart sinks.</p><p>______________________________</p><p>When the ship glides into harbor, its sails stowed and its rowers chanting in time to a high flute, she marches them on board and demands a young boy take her to the captain. They’re left to wait for some time outside his cabin, while he looks over the manifest and negotiates fees with the harbormaster. Zuko does not look at Katara, cannot look at her. His heart feels shriveled in his chest, like a mango left too long in an ice cooler, puckered and sour and frozen.</p><p>Of course she would mistrust him, of course she would guard her secrets. To him, she’s someone fascinating, a glimpse of another world. To her, he’s the scion of pillagers and invaders.</p><p>The harbormaster leaves, and Katara pulls a Pai Sho tile from her sleeve, takes his hand, and marches him into the captain’s cabin.</p><p>“Passage is given to those who-” she says, and then her voice fails. </p><p>The captain is nearing the midpoint of middle-age, his hair is shoulder length, peppered with grey, and tied back by a thin blue band, and his eyes are a dazzling blue, blue as the sea in the sunlight. He lunges upright at their entrance, gaping openly, then Katara drops her bags and leaps into the man’s arms.</p><p>“Dad!” She exclaims, and the man embraces her.</p><p>“Katara!” He gasps. “What are you doing here? You’re here! You’re alive, thank La, Katara I was so-”</p><p>“I know, I’m sorry, I tried to get word-”</p><p>“Sokka’s been looking everywhere, Pakku is-”</p><p>“And we had to travel secretly-”</p><p>What compelled you to do it, how could you-”</p><p>“Famine in the countryside, we barely managed-”</p><p>“Sent out hawks to everyone asking them to look, I thought-”</p><p>“So scared, I was afraid-”</p><p>“Refused to bury you-”</p><p>“I missed you so much, Dad.” They embrace again, and Zuko stands back. When Katara’s father turns his gaze to him, he awkwardly drops the pack he’s holding, the oilskin wrapped around his twin swords, the little remaining food they have, a change of clothes, and winter gloves, and he bends at the waist, and lowers himself onto his knees, his head bowed, the appropriate gesture of respect for a wife’s father.</p><p>“Is he hurt?” the man demands, and Katara shakes her head, and then, he asks more softly. “Is it him?”</p><p>“Yes,” she says. “Come on Zuko, my dad’s not going to rub your head or whatever you expect him to do, so you better just stand up.” It’s a breach of custom, but it’s a worse breach of custom for her father to ignore his obeisance, so he allows himself to rise, although he keeps his head bent at a respectful angle.</p><p>“Chieftain Hakoda,” he says, formally. “May Agni oversee your path.”</p><p>“It’s La whose help I’ll need navigating the worst of the winter storms,” her father says with a chuckle, and he holds out his arm. It’s not customary, but Zuko supposes that all his male relatives are dead, so Hakoda is technically his closest living ancestor. He presses his lips to the man’s hand.</p><p>The man pulls away in horror.</p><p>“Katara!” Hakoda exclaims, but the girl is doubled over, laughing, laughing so hard that tears have formed in her eyes. “What was that?” He demands. Zuko feels his face flush.</p><p>“You’re the one who held out your arm!” He says, and then, remembering his manners, “I apologize if I have caused you alarm, Chieftain.”</p><p>“Not to kiss like lovers! To clasp, as confederates!”</p><p>“I apologize,” Zuko says, stiffly. “I meant no offense, honorable Chieftain.”</p><p>“Oh Dad,” Katara says. “You should have seen your face! And Zuko, you’re bright red! Why not start over?” Her question disintegrates into peals of laughter, and she takes a moment to compose herself, breathing deeply. “Zuko, this is my father, Chieftain Hakoda of the Federated Southern Water Tribe. And Dad, this is Crown Prince Zuko of the Fire Nation, my-” she pauses. She swallows. She straightens her spine. “My husband.”</p><p>“An honor, Chieftain,” Zuko says, bowing again.</p><p>“Prince Zuko,” her father says, and although his tone is formal, his eyes glimmer. “This is an honor I did not expect. You can share Ujurak’s cabin, Katara, he took extended leave after he broke his ribs, and it’s been sitting empty since Port Hanora.” Zuko feels himself flushing again, and although he knows it’s extraordinarily impolite to interject, he cannot help himself.</p><p>“It’s not like that!” He says. “I mean, we are married, but not- we didn’t- I wouldn’t-” he’s floundering, and Katara is no help. Hakoda only watches him wordlessly, his eyebrow ticking higher with every garbled word. Zuko thinks of his own father, and how he despised ineloquence. “Ours is purely a spiritual union,” he finishes, aware even as he says it that he sounds like a fool.</p><p>“The last one was not nearly so uptight,” Hakoda says to Katara, and he scowls, certainly not at the mention of a <em>last one</em>, definitely because Hakoda saw fit to mock him. “Alright then, Prince Zuko. I’ll ask Bato to find you room in the sailors’ quarters." Zuko bows, and in the corner of his vision, he catches Katara frowning.</p><p>It’s not like he’s much more than a Fire Nation brigand to her anyway. She’ll probably be grateful to sleep alone.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0011"><h2>11. A Little More Than Kin and Less Than Kind</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p><br/>The ship weighs anchor with the evening tide, and once the rowers pull them clear of the bay, the sails are raised, and then they are skimming out to sea, moving quickly over the currents. The salt air washes away the stench of the overcrowded city, and Hakoda demands that all the passengers scrub themselves with brine and lye to cleanse the filth of Minato from their bodies. </p><p>Zuko revels in his first true bath since Hama’s inn, even if he is forced to wash naked and standing up, with other men, sailors and passengers alike, around him. But when he returns for his clothes, he finds them gone.</p><p>“Rumors of plague,” Bato says, conversationally. Since Hakoda handed him off to his helmsman, Zuko had endured the man’s presence, hovering just on the edge of his vision, watching. Zuko sees the faded red of a healed burn on his chest. “The chief ordered the clothes tossed overboard. He said you could borrow something.”</p><p>Zuko knows the hospitality rituals of the Southern Water Tribe from the stories Katara told him. He knows that when a guest puts on his host’s clothes, the bond between them becomes indissoluble, and neither is able to harm the other without angering the spirits.</p><p>He dresses himself in the borrowed clothing. He is taller than Hakoda, slightly, although his body is more slender, and the clothes fit him poorly. Bato looks on in evident amusement.</p><p>“It appears your spiritual wife will need to hem your clothes.” </p><p>Zuko dislikes the insinuation of his ineptitude.</p><p>“I’m more than capable, Helmsman. I would not inconvenience Katara, but I thank you for your concern.” Bato grins, although his eyes maintain their icy shimmer.</p><p>“Is the Fire Nation so accustomed to peace that its men learn women’s work instead of war?”</p><p>The question puzzles Zuko. Women’s work means things like childbirth and breastfeeding and serving the seven spirits of the heavens’ seven houses, none of which he is familiar with. He senses from the helmsman’s tone that the question is intended as an insult, and as such, he chooses to ignore it. He would never see fit to insult his host, and if his host’s subordinates feel free to mock him, that is the failure of their own hospitality.</p><p>______________________________</p><p>Even dressed in blue, Zuko knows he is noticeable. His scar drags strangers’ eyes to his face, and his skin is paler than theirs, his hair darker, his features unmistakably Fire Nation. When he sits down at the general mess for dinner, he sits alone, except for Bato, who sits opposite him, observing him with a cool interest.</p><p>Zuko thinks someone should tell the chief’s helmsman that the war’s over, and has been for years. </p><p>“Burn yourself?” The man asks, conversationally. Zuko’s pulse ticks up, and his temperature with it.</p><p>“No.”</p><p>“It’s a nasty one,” the man says. “You’re lucky you didn’t lose an eye.” He would have, if his uncle hadn’t cast his bolt of lightning when he did. The healer said even a second more, and his vision would have been permanently compromised. Zuko breathes, to loosen the roiling tension in his stomach. “So?” The man says. “How’d it happen?” Zuko does not answer. “I’ll guess. Your uncle the Fire Lord needed to ensure the line of succession, but didn’t want you developing ideas of succeeding him prematurely. Am I close?”</p><p>“No.”</p><p>“Zuko?” He’s relieved to hear Katara’s voice, and he raises his hand in a tentative wave.</p><p>“Well well, if it isn’t the other half of the spiritually wed pair,” Bato grins, and Katara socks his arm.</p><p>“Shut up Bato.”</p><p>“It’s good to see you, Kid.”</p><p>“You too,” she says. “I was so excited to be going home, but I still can’t believe Dad is the captain of this ship. It’s so good to be back!” Zuko looks away, not wishing to intrude, and to his surprise, she plops down beside him. “You smell loads better,” she says.</p><p>“Thanks.” </p><p>“It was a compliment!”</p><p>“Not much of one.” She rolls her eyes, and picks a shred of smoked fish off his plate, and eats it. “You smell better too.”</p><p>“Are you saying I stunk before?” He sighs, and when he looks up from his plate, he finds Bato’s steely gaze fixed on him.</p><p>“No,” he says, lamely, and she laughs. She’s dressed in Water Tribe blue, her red cast off, and he wonders if he’ll ever see her in his colors again, and he hates himself for wondering. Undoubtedly she is happy to be wearing the customary clothing of her tribe again.</p><p>“I’m glad you’ve met Bato,” she says. “He and my father have been friends since childhood; he’s the one I told you about, who went with my father on his search for a waterbending master for me.”</p><p>“Your spiritual husband was just telling me about his scar,” the helmsman says, cooly.</p><p>“Bato,” she says, and Zuko is surprised at the ice in her tone. “Don’t torment him.”</p><p>“I would never,” the man says. “By the way, how did it happen, Prince?”</p><p>“That’s enough,” she says, and Bato does not ask again.</p><p>______________________________</p><p>That night, Zuko dreams.</p><p>He stands on the edge of a vast cliff, and he peers down into a river of fire, liquid and surging, and the ground beneath his feet gives way, and he tumbles, headlong, into the flames.</p><p>He expects his skin to burn, he braces himself for agony, but although he sinks into a bed of embers, he remains uninjured.</p><p>“What do you offer?” the flames whisper, and he finds himself holding his Crown Prince’s pin in his hands.</p><p>“All that I have,” he says, and the fire swirls around him.</p><p>“What do you ask?” He thinks of Katara, beautiful and powerful and unattainable, and his heart twists because he knows she does not want him, and she, it turns out, is what he truly wants. But he knows the story of Orahama well enough to avoid asking for her love.</p><p>“Save my people,” he says, and the fire swirls around him.</p><p>“Complete your pilgrimage to become my instrument.”</p><p>“Wait!” He cries, but the fire exhales him, shoots him upward like a spark, and for a moment he hangs over the desolate isles of the dead Sun Warriors, and then he is falling, down, down, down.</p><p>______________________________</p><p>Zuko falls out of his hammock and cracks his head on the hard wooden deck of the ship. At the same time, he realizes with a shock of horror that his Crown Prince’s pin, his inheritance, his birthright, has been tossed overboard with the rest of his clothes.</p><p>The guilt in his stomach sickens him, and he races up out of the galley, onto the deck, and he vomits over the railing, his breath coming in gasps.</p><p>“Unused to sea travel, Prince?” It’s Bato, sitting watch from the helm. Zuko can hear the amusement in the man’s voice. Zuko perfectly masters his emotions, and does not say <em>fuck you</em>. But he does think it.</p><p>______________________________</p><p>Zuko sits in the waning autumn sunlight, legs crossed, back straight, trying to thread a needle on a rocking boat. He guides the gut through the thin eye, and picks up his borrowed shirt. He’s aware of Bato’s critical gaze, but he ignores it, and he stills his fingers and his mind and he recalls his education in the seventh mode of study.</p><p>The Fire Lord sews his own robes for his coronation day, and embroiders them with the symbols he intends to make his own. Azulon’s robes depicted a great, winged dragon speared by a lone man, and his pattern incorporated the motifs of the Water and Earth nations, consumed by fire. Ozai’s robes had been even more grandiose, displaying a raging forest fire consuming the earth. Iroh, of course, had opted for his twining vines and rising suns, symbols of change and peace and order.</p><p>Zuko wonders what he would have chosen. He’d told Lu Ten, when his cousin once asked him, that turtleducks were his favorite animal. He imagines the finery of a Fire Lord with little hatchlings outlined in green and yellow on the silk, and he smiles.</p><p>Zuko is drawn into his work, the pliant pull of thread through fabric, the easy shaping of a shirt. It’s simple, pleasurable, and it warms him the way playing a familiar tune on an old instrument does.</p><p>When he glances up, he’s confronted by a dozen pairs of eyes openly staring at him from a dozen shocked faces. He meets Hakoda’s gaze. The chieftain murmurs something to Bato, and then makes a shooing gesture with his hands, and the crowd scatters wordlessly. Zuko resumes his work, refusing to be cowed by strangers. He may be dispossessed, but he is still a prince. When he rises, his labors accomplished, Bato coughs.</p><p>“The chief would like to see you for tea.” </p><p>Zuko smiles. He may not understand much about the Water Tribes, but he knows every tea ceremony perfectly, and his manners are above reproof. He dips his head in acceptance.</p><p>______________________________</p><p>When Zuko enters the Hakoda's cabin, his eyes catch on the niche in the wall, which harbors an image of a solemn, blue-eyed woman robed in white. She could be Katara in ten years time, he thinks, and his heart twists. Her mother, then.</p><p>He bows deeply towards the image, then sinks to his knees in the ritual gesture for apology. For a hairsbreadth, his vision splinters and he sees his own mother’s skin blistering in fire, and then he breathes, and rises, and bows again, and turns to face his host.</p><p>Hakoda is looking at him with slack-jawed astonishment, and the seat where Katara should be is conspicuously empty. It’s untraditional for a wife’s husband and father to drink tea alone.</p><p>His pulse increases, and his hands heat. He breathes, and bows deeply to Hakoda.</p><p>“Chieftain Hakoda, may Agni light your path.”</p><p>“And yours,” Hakoda says. “Please, Prince Zuko, sit.” Zuko does as invited, drawing his legs up beneath him into the ritual kiza, balanced on his heels, his hands crossed respectfully in his lap, his head bowed, waiting for the signal to relax into a more comfortable position. It does not come. “Katara tells me you are not at all what she expected.” </p><p>It’s not polite to talk business during tea. They should be discussing a poem, or a painting, or anything but politics. He does not know how to respond, so he refrains from speaking.</p><p>“She tells me you refused to consummate the marriage,” Hakoda says, and Zuko’s face flames instantly. Hakoda’s tone is delicate, but his words are sharp. “Why?”</p><p>“The Fire Sage was drunk,” he lies, and he glances at the man. Hakoda taps his fingers together.</p><p>“So Katara said,” Hakoda responds. “I know little about the Fire Nation, Prince Zuko, but one thing I do know is that the Fire Sages abstain from all intoxicants, as a part of the cultivation of their Sacred Flame.” His heart stutters, he had not expected any tribesmen to be so familiar with the practices of his peoples’ priests. “So, that suggests to me that you must have had a reason for lying to my daughter and refusing to accomplish the marriage. I can think of two. One, women do not appeal to you.” Zuko flushes again, his temperature ticks upwards, and he finds himself wishing for the simplicity of the road, and Katara’s solitary, easy companionship. “And two, you are aware of the implications of marrying outside your nation, and you do not support your uncle’s program of peace. Tell me, Prince Zuko, which of these is true?”</p><p>“Neither,” he says, and it’s not a lie. He had been worried about the legitimacy of his rule if he was wed to an alien, but he could always have put her aside if she proved problematic.</p><p>“What, then?” Hakoda asks. “What reason could you possibly have for rejecting the contract your uncle insisted my daughter secure with her body?” His tone is demanding, his words sharp.</p><p>“No good one,” Zuko says, and Hakoda frowns at him.</p><p>“I will not be lied to. A boy like you, raised the way you were, thinks these things through. So tell me, or else I will make you tell me. Is it your intent to restart the Hundred Years War when you gain power?”</p><p>“No!” And it’s not, he realizes, as he says it.</p><p>“Do you want to end the alliances?”</p><p>“No!” And he doesn’t. He’d never seen the point of them before, believing fire to be the only worthy element, the one destined to rule the world, but he knows that without the Earth Kingdom’s grain trade and the Water Tribes’ fishing, his people will die in their thousands by the end of the next winter. If maintaining peace is the cost of maintaining their lives, then peace is worthwhile.</p><p>“Will you reject the New Peace?” His people are starving. Their lands are in flames. Famine and plague are certain. He could not wage war against the other nations if he wanted to.</p><p>“No.”</p><p>“So what then?” Hakoda demands, and Zuko shuts his eyes, but he cannot stop the words from slipping out.</p><p>“I knew what happened to her mother.” His words hang in the air, their implication sharper than his swords. Hakoda does not draw in a breath, his eyes are steely, his mouth clenches into a thin line. “I knew what Yon Rha did to her. And when Katara looked at me- Agni is a merciful god. He does not want the immolation of the innocent. I thought- I thought I would be forgiven for profaning the ceremony by refusing to- I couldn’t. I couldn’t hurt her.”</p><p>Hakoda exhales, and with his breath goes his fury.</p><p>“I’ve heard your father scarred you,” he says. Zuko wonders how Hakoda knows, but Bato does not, but the time to question him does not seem auspicious. He dips his head. “An enemy of Ozai is a friend to the Water Tribe. I will grant you conditional amnesty. You are Katara’s responsibility. How you act will reflect on her. I trust this is incentive enough to behave yourself?”</p><p>“Certainly, Chieftain,” Zuko says, and Hakoda smiles.</p><p>“Excellent. Come, have your tea.” Hakoda drinks, and he follows. The taste of jasmine dredges up memories of his uncle. It’s been a long time since he’s had the freedom to enjoy a tea ceremony, and he bends his hand in the ritual gesture of thanks. He waits for Hakoda to introduce the topic for their ceremony, but the man seems content to sip. Zuko wishes he would give the signal that he is permitted to relax from his kiza to a seiza, but the man does not, even though he sits comfortably in the agura, contrary to custom. “I can divorce you, if you like,” Hakoda says, and Zuko, his face finally a comfortable temperature, flushes again.</p><p>“Oh,” he says, scrambling for words, his heart sinking. “If that is what Katara wishes, then of course I will assent.”</p><p>“You do not wish it?” The man’s tone is arch, probing. Zuko wishes he could stop flushing, almost as much as he wishes the man would stop talking about weighty things during tea.</p><p>“Marriage is sacred,” he demurs. “It would not be my desire to profane my vows before Agni.”</p><p>“I see,” Hakoda says, and his eyes glimmer. Zuko’s calves ache from the uncomfortable kiza, and he wonders just how long the chieftain intends to draw out his torture.</p><p>______________________________</p><p>Katara joins him for dinner, and afterwards, he leans over the ship’s railing and shares his dinner with the flying pufferfish that soar along in the boat’s wake. He can tell she’s hiding a smile, but she doesn’t laugh at him, and she glares at a passenger who makes a snide comment, so he doesn’t mind her presence too much.</p><p>(She smells of seabrine and fresh air, her hair is long and loose about her face, her borrowed Water Tribe clothes cling to her slender frame, and her cheeks are flushed by the cold wind.)</p><p>“My dad says you don’t want a divorce,” she says. He retches again, but nothing comes up, so he presses his head against the deck and prays for the boat to stop rocking. </p><p>“I swore an oath by Agni,” he says. (Of course, he’d also sworn an oath by Agni to uphold his uncle’s rule, and he’d betrayed his uncle to his face, but she doesn’t know that.) “But I won’t keep you against your will.”</p><p>“You’ll have an easier time fitting into the tribe if you’re married to me,” she says. “I wouldn’t mind staying married a bit longer.”</p><p>He feels ill, and he’s not sure if it’s because of his seasickness, or because she’s agreeing to remain married to him out of pity.</p><p>______________________________</p><p>The ship skims south. The winds and the tides are in their favor, although storms chase them across the grey ocean, preventing any hope of returning north. Zuko loses his breakfast until, one day, he gains his sea-legs. Life becomes merrier when he’s no longer fighting to keep down every last morsel of food.</p><p>Katara eats meals beside him, and infrequently, he and she are summoned for tea in Hakoda’s cabin, where he maintains his kiza through gritted teeth and deep breaths designed to diffuse pain.</p><p>After the seventh such afternoon, he limps out of Hakoda’s cabin and collapses against the ship’s rail, and Katara sits beside him.</p><p>“Your father hates me,” he complains, and Katara scrunches up her eyes.</p><p>“He may not love you, but he hardly hates you. He does wish you had a better sense of humor.” He scowls, and rubs his aching calves.</p><p>“Maybe I’d be more inclined to laugh at his jokes if he’d let me out of my kiza.” Katara raises her eyebrow.</p><p>“What’s a kiza?”</p><p>______________________________</p><p>The next time he and Katara are invited to join Hakoda for tea, and he assumes the ritual posture, Katara bangs her teacup with her finger in a very unmannerly way, and says, </p><p>“Dad, Zuko’s been torturing himself because he needs special permission to sit comfortably.” Hakoda looks at him, and he scowls at Katara for making light of his manners.</p><p>“At ease, soldier,” he says, jesting, and Zuko allows himself to sink into a seiza, even if the ritual hand gesture wasn’t given. “I wondered why you insisted on sitting like that. It looked very uncomfortable.”</p><p>“It is,” Zuko says, and Hakoda actually cracks a smile.</p><p>“You know, when Sokka and Katara were younger, she used to have pretend tea, and-”</p><p>“Dad!” Katara interrupts, but her father continues.</p><p>“She would make up very elaborate rules, and she would get furious if Sokka didn’t follow along, except she never bothered actually explaining them, so her poor brother had to guess what she wanted, and he rarely guessed right.” Zuko is surprised at the fondness in Hakoda’s voice when he speaks of Katara’s brother. He’d gathered, from how close Katara and her father are, that she is the favored one, which makes sense, given her exceptional bending. But he speaks of Sokka in the same tone as he does his daughter.</p><p>“Sounds like my sister,” he says, and Katara flashes him a slight smile. He’s told her bits and pieces about Azula, her impressive bending, her dedication, her longing for their father, her propensity to lie. What he likes about Katara (one of the things he likes about Katara) is that she knows when not to ask questions.</p><p>“If you’d said something, you could’ve spared yourself a lot of pain,” Hakoda says, but he says it the same way Iroh used to say his proverbs, like there is a meaning behind it, a meaning that Zuko is incapable of parsing.</p><p>______________________________</p><p>The ship sails into the winter haven of the Southern Water Tribe, at the northernmost tip of the pole, where the sun only disappears for three weeks, instead of six months. (Zuko dreads the sun’s absence the same way he dreads his own death.) Despite his borrowed clothes, Zuko’s bones are splintered by a deep chill, and his teeth chatter and he worries that he will freeze to death before he manages the walk from the harbor to Hakoda’s igloo.</p><p>The wintering ground is deserted, the scattered tribes all roughly two weeks away from arriving, or so Katara informs him. When they finally reach the igloo, Katara and Hakoda strip off their coats, and set about unpacking. Zuko shivers in his borrowed furs. The chief wordlessly piles more wood onto the fire at the entrance.</p><p>When he finally thaws enough to stand up straight, he looks around the igloo. It’s a small building, and the ice walls are hung with furs. A pile of sleeping mats is laid neatly against the wall, and nooks scored into the permafrost hold iron chests and wooden boxes. A harpoon and a spear hang crossed over the fur-covered entrance.</p><p>“I’ll make you a coat,” Katara promises, and he’s cheered at the thought of the thick furs that Hakoda wraps around himself.</p><p>“I can do it,” he tells her, and she gives him a quizzical glance.</p><p>“But sewing is women’s work.”</p><p>“What’s women’s work?” He asks, and Hakoda, in the corner, snorts.</p><p>“You know. Things like washing and cooking and herb gathering and healing and mending and sewing.”</p><p>“Is there men’s work?” He asks, and Hakoda actually laughs, which Zuko thinks is quite rude.</p><p>“There’s hunting and fishing and rowing and sailing.”</p><p>“But in the Fire Nation women do all those things, and the Fire Lord sews his own robes.”</p><p>“Well, if you want to help, I won’t say no,” Katara says. He wants to help, because he appreciates her hospitality and doesn’t want to inconvenience her. He does not want to help just so he can sit beside her, and listen to her talk about all the meals she’s excited to eat, or how she cannot wait for the rest of the tribe to arrive for their great assembly.</p><p>He’s aware of Hakoda’s eyes on him, as he runs his fingers through the soft foxwhale fur that will form the inside of his coat, and he tries desperately to look disinterested when Katara bids him stand so she can take his measurements. When she’s satisfied, she opens a large iron chest filled with gut and bone needles and loose furs and gleaming bronze shears, and she sets him to sewing the pleating for his arms. In the corner, Hakoda guts a flying walrus his men managed to shoot down before they landed.</p><p>“Where will I sleep?” He asks, tentatively.</p><p>“Here,” she says, as though the answer is obvious.</p><p>He sleeps on a pallet between Katara and Hakoda.</p><p>He wonders if he’ll ever hold her in his arms again, and he hates himself for wondering.</p><p>______________________________</p><p>He dreams of his uncle burning alive, and he wakes with tears frozen to his cheeks. Despite the cold, he bundles himself up in his unfinished coat, and he leaves the igloo to sit beneath the stars. His breath of fire warms him, and he focuses on regulating his chi, on calming himself.</p><p>He jumps when he realizes Hakoda is seated beside him.</p><p>“Katara told me you had bad dreams,” the chief says, and Zuko wonders what else she told him. Perhaps all of his secrets have been laid bare to her father. “It’s strange, seeing a face like yours with a burn like that.” </p><p>He ducks his head to hide his scar, and Hakoda holds out a flask to him. He drinks deeply, expecting water, and instead he swallows a mouthful of grain alcohol, and he coughs at the harsh taste that brings tears to his eyes. The liquid burns its way down his esophagus, and warms his stomach pleasantly. Hakoda's eyes quirk upwards in what Zuko imagines to be amusement, but when he speaks, his tone is somber.</p><p>“For a long time, I thought I could heal the world by burning it down. I hated everyone, everything, after my wife- after what happened. I went half mad with fear that I would lose Katara like I lost her mother. When I heard she ran away from the north to marry willingly into your line, I almost tore my eyes out in fury and horror.”</p><p>“I’m sorry,” Zuko says, softly. “I’m sorry for what we did. I know it was wrong, I know we profaned Agni by our deeds.” He drinks again from the offered flask, and this time, finds the alcohol almost pleasant. </p><p>“I held such hope for the New Peace,” Hakoda says. “There are waterbenders in the South again, there are babies, there are elders to teach religion and custom.” Zuko drinks a third time. “And now, the world’s in uproar, and it seems no matter who wins the civil war, more war will follow. King Kuei is pushing for intervention, and Arnook is considering it. Even when you people fight yourselves, you end up killing others.” Zuko shivers at the bitter hatred in the man’s words, and he steels himself into a semblance of bravery.</p><p>“In the Fire Nation, we used to practice blood propitiation. A life for a life. I’m not much of anyone any more, and without my pin I have no way of proving I’m the Crown Prince, but I’m still Fire Nation. If it would help-” he draws in a breath, he refuses to allow his tongue to tangle up his words in fear. “My life is yours.” Hakoda laughs, a low, bitter laugh.</p><p>“What good is another death, another body on the bier of the eternal war? You’re my guest, you’re wearing my clothes, you sleep in my igloo, you’re wed <em>spiritually</em> to my daughter. Bloodshed won’t solve my people’s anguish.”</p><p>“But to harbor the kin of the man who murdered your wife-”</p><p>“Is like being the heir of the man who killed your father,” Hakoda says, levelly. “Peace is always a compromise, isn’t it?”</p><p>It’s not a question Zuko is supposed to answer. But Hakoda offers him the liquor again, and he drinks, and even if the world is collapsing into war, there is peace between the two of them, and for the moment, that is enough.</p>
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<a name="section0012"><h2>12. Such Love Must Needs be Treason in My Breast</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Once his coat is completed, Katara loans him a pair of Sokka’s old fur-lined gloves, and Hakoda trades a slim vial of ambergris for a new pair of insulated boots. Their charity distresses him. He is a prince, he should not need to rely on kindness to dress himself. He has nothing to offer, no way of repaying what he is given, so he bites his tongue and eats small portions and accepts their generosity with humble bows that erode his pride.</p><p>They are among the first to arrive, forty people, mostly men, from three different tribes. The city, he learns, is divided along tribal lines, although not strictly. Winter is courting-time, and outside the circles designated to each kin-group, there are neutral spaces for the young to mingle.</p><p>It’s bad luck to birth a baby in winter, but it’s expected that conception will occur in the dark of the long night, when precious few activities remain except for sleeping and eating and searching out pleasure. He flushes hotly at Katara’s words, but the wind is brutal, and his cheeks are already reddened by its piercing needles, and he thinks she does not notice.</p><p>Ice walls rise high along either side of the path, designed to block the worst of the wind, and prevent a wanderer from getting lost in a blizzard.</p><p>Katara shows him the plot of land allotted for her own tribe: the spence stocked with smoked meats and dried herbs, the igloos for family units (he learns with horror that the tribesmen live in households of wedded couples, a mother and a father and their daughters and their daughters’ husbands), the underground rooms designated for education, the pen area for the livestock animals, the kennels for the beardogs, the mews for the messenger birds, the communal bathing room, (he has no doubt in the coming months he will swallow his pride and endure nakedness around others to absorb the heat that emanates from the shut door), and finally, the great gathering hall, built from glacierstone and rising to double the height of the buildings around it.</p><p>There’s little grandeur about the city, or the insular, intimate wintering place of her tribe. There are no gardens of singing birds and swimming turtleducks, no servants in red brocade, no thousand year old portraits looming over him. There’s only the white ice and the white snow and the pale blue sky and the cutting cold that knifes through his exposed skin, and chills the fire in his heart. </p><p>“I know it’s not what you’re used to,” she says. “But it’s my home.” She says it like she loves the barren place, like she’d gladly trade all the jewels of the Fire Nation for the opportunity to bathe communally and muck out animal pens. </p><p>He wonders if he loves Caldera. Certainly he loves the people, who offer him flowers when he rides in his palanquin, who sing long prayers for his family’s health, who do their best to live in peace. He’s seen enough of their struggles, disguised beneath his blue mask, to know that their lives are not easy.</p><p>But if his uncle had told him to take his wife and dwell in the high fells of Areichi in the north, he would not have mourned the labyrinthine passages of the imperial palace, nor the fetid miasma of the lower city.</p><p>“I will be glad to learn about it,” he says, and he actually means it. She turns to him, and her face is rosy from the chill and the wind, and she smiles at him with her gleaming white teeth, and she leans against him, drawing into his warmth. The slope of her body is the slope of a green hillock rising up over a village, her brindled tresses scatter sunbeams like a crystal river.</p><p>He’s memorized poems since before he was old enough to recognize them, he can’t help that they come to him when he looks at her. She is distant from him, untouchable as moonlight.</p><p>“Once the rest of the tribe comes, we’ll find a place for you,” she says. “But until then, if you really don’t mind doing women’s work, would you help me with the laundry?”</p><p>“Of course,” he says, surprised at the hesitancy in her voice. As a guest without a host-gift, it is his duty to aid in whatever way he is able. (Agni, he’s lying to himself. He wants to be with her, to watch the candlelight dapple across her face, to catch the quick half-smile she feigns ignorance of when he says something she thinks is stupid, to hear her light laugh filtering through the cold air, to marvel at the delicate motions of her slender fingers.)</p><p>______________________________</p><p>“They expect us to do all this alone?” He asks, in disbelief. The laundry, it turns out, is boiled in a giant vat, then scrubbed with an abrasive lye and animal fat soap that hurts his fingers, and, finally, is hung to dry over a smoldering fire. At least it’s more pleasant than the way he was forced to do laundry with the Fire Sages. They’ve been given charge of all the filthy clothes of Hakoda’s crew, and as the only woman in her tribe, Katara, it seems, is left to the long labor.</p><p>“Well, obviously it’s not expected of you,” she says, and her mouth twists. “You can go do whatever the men do.”</p><p>“I’m here already,” he says. “I don’t mind helping. And I think your tribesmen would prefer me not to intrude.” He lights the fire easily, and warms the water while she watches. She takes off her coat and rolls up her sleeves, and he mimics her.</p><p>“Have you done laundry before?” She asks, and he nods.</p><p>“It was one of my duties when I spent my year at the monastery with the Fire Sages, but we do it differently in the Fire Nation than here.”</p><p>“You do?” He puts an armful of clothes into the cauldron, ignoring the splash of the boiling water, and he prods them underneath the surface with a staff. </p><p>“It’s not women’s work, it’s just work, for one. And for another we don’t use lye to clean the clothes, we use urine.” She shudders, and he can almost see the bile rising in her throat.</p><p>“That’s absolutely disgusting!”</p><p>“It is not, it’s eminently practical. Once it sits in the sun for a few days it gains cleansing properties, and it’s mixed with water, and then you put the clothes in it and stamp on them to get the stains out, and then you rinse them in clean water and hang them out to dry. It works very well.”</p><p>“Why do you even know this?”</p><p>“I’m the future Fire Lord, it’s my job to know how my people do things.”</p><p>“I’m still pretty convinced that’s disgusting and unsanitary.”</p><p>“I think it’s gross to scrub the stains with your hands.” She rolls her eyes, and takes up the stiff scrubbing brush, and sets to work.</p><p>They fall into an easy system. He stirs the clothes in the vat, she cleans them, he takes them and sets them up to dry.</p><p>“Do you like doing this?” He asks her. She shrugs.</p><p>“It’s something I’ve done since I was a girl.”</p><p>“I suppose I just don’t understand dividing labor based on sex,” he says. “It seems inefficient.”</p><p>“I think maybe it wasn’t always like this,” she says. “I don’t know a lot about what our tribe was like when we had waterbenders, but I do know that unlike in the north, women were taught combat bending, not just healing, and there’s a story about Avatar Kuruk and a woman from our tribe competing to catch the slumbering sea-serpent that lies dormant beneath the ice, even though women aren’t permitted to hunt now.”</p><p>“But what changed?” He asks, and feels the shame seeping through him at the obvious answer. His people, of course. They changed.</p><p>“Women are needed to have babies,” she says. “I think my tribe calculated who they could best afford to lose. If a man dies, a woman can always find another husband, but the loss of even a single potential mother would threaten the survival of the tribe.”</p><p>“Never again,” he says, and he’s surprised at the fury in his voice. “Never, I swear it. I do not want your people to suffer, I don’t want anyone to suffer.”</p><p>“What do you want, Zuko?” She asks him. <em>You. I want you, Katara, with your quicksilver tongue and your birdsong laugh and your eyes bluer than the Lazuli Cove. </em></p><p>How can he answer her? He wants what his people have always wanted from hers, he wants to make her his, he wants to take her away from her home and her culture and install her in his palace and make her his wife in truth. Never again means never, even for him.</p><p>______________________________</p><p>“My tribe will be here soon,” she says. “Perhaps in only a few days, and I wanted to tell you something before they arrive.” He hates his heart for the way it flutters, and his stomach for the way it crawls into his throat. They’re mending the clothing now, patching worn elbows and knees, fixing little rips made by the ratmoths that often infest ships. She’s close to him, so close he could put his arm around her shoulders and draw her into him. He’s slept with her head on his chest, he knows how perfectly her body melds to his.</p><p>“What?” He knows how to keep emotion out of his voice. If only he knew a trick for keeping hope out of his head.</p><p>“It’s about Yue,” she says. “I think it’s time I tell you what happened.”</p><p>“Okay,” he says, and he isn’t disappointed. She’s been reticent to tell him the story of Sokka and Yue, he should be thankful that she’s decided to trust him.</p><p>“It happened about a year before you were supposed to marry her. Sokka and a friend and I had recently returned to the Northern Water Tribe, and when a Fire Nation ship asked harbor access. Neither Arnook nor your uncle’s ambassador, Jeong-Jeong, was aware of its arrival, but they had your uncle’s seal and a flag of peace, so they were permitted to dock in the deep harbor, and were welcomed on shore. Yue and my brother and a friend and I were there, and we had dinner with them, but Sokka just wouldn’t stop saying there was something off about them, and it turns out there was, because while we were eating, a squadron of armed soldiers overpowered Arnook’s guards and violated the spirit oasis of the Northern Water Tribe.”</p><p>“A spirit oasis?” He asks.</p><p>“The spirits have to maintain a corporeal form on earth to exercise their powers. The Northern Water Tribe was home to Tui, the moon spirit, and La, the ocean spirit, and they maintained the balance of the moon and the tides. But the soldiers, dressed in your uncle’s colors, murdered Tui just as we burst in to stop them. The moon went red-”</p><p>“I remember that,” Zuko says. The royal astronomers had not predicted it, and Iroh had never received a satisfactory explanation.</p><p>“And I stopped being able to waterbend, because I draw my power from the moon. We assumed it was an invasion. We routed the soldiers from the oasis, and Yue gave her own life. Tui had saved her as a baby, and so she returned the spirit’s life force and became the moon.”</p><p>“My fiancé turned into the moon?” He asks, disbelieving, but he knows when Katara’s telling the truth. “Why didn’t you tell my uncle?”</p><p>“My friend is a very powerful bender. When we realized we were under attack, he sunk the ship and slaughtered all the soldiers, we were unable to question them to determine their allegiance. Arnook was convinced your uncle had tried to violate the peace treaty, but Jeong-Jeong assured him it must have been some misunderstanding. When he demanded Yue, despite the lie that Sokka had seduced her, Arnook thought he might have orchestrated the whole thing to kill her and make it look like we broke the alliance first. He wanted to strike first, knock out your northern ports, and ensure you wouldn’t have a staging ground for the northern invasion.”</p><p>“That would wipe out half our food supply,” Zuko says, the implication terrifying.</p><p>“So Jeong-Jeong said.”</p><p>“Wait, why was Jeong-Jeong in Chieftain Arnook’s war councils?”</p><p>“It’s a long story. But anyway, Jeong-Jeong said Iroh would be willing to extend the same treaty for another girl of equal standing. He said that if it turned out that Iroh had ordered the attack, he’d consider Arnook’s plan-”</p><p>“Jeong-Jeong said he'd consider attacking the Fire Nation?!”</p><p>“It’s not like that, shush, you’re getting in the way of my story. Obviously I was the most logical choice, so Arnook entreated me to take his daughter’s place, and to discover whether the Fire Nation was hostile to Water Tribe interests. If so, well, you can imagine.”</p><p>“That is unbelievable,” Zuko says. His mind is spinning, and he can’t grasp any part of her story because each subsequent event is more insane than the last. “Just to be clear, my fiance turned into the moon, my uncle’s close friend and ambassador offered to let you invade the Fire Nation on a whim, and you agreed to marry me believing that my uncle and I had tried to restart our genocide of the Water Tribes?”</p><p>“Very concise,” she says, and he shakes his head.</p><p>“Why? Why on earth wouldn’t you just attack first?”</p><p>“Because Jeong-Jeong said that Iroh would not break the peace, and his argument was convincing. And he took me aside and promised me that you were a decent boy, and your uncle was a good man, and that I would be safe.”</p><p>“Katara-” he says. “We almost destroyed you. It would have been logical to assume our guilt.”</p><p>“We want peace, Zuko,” she says. “And Jeong-Jeong promised us that your uncle did too. Peace is too precious a thing to throw away."</p><p>She sounds so hopeful, so young when she speaks. </p><p>“It wasn’t Iroh,” he says.</p><p>“I know, Zuko. I don’t believe you or your uncle would attack us. I told my father I believe the rebels are the most logical culprits. They would have the most to gain from war between us.” He imagines the cruelty and calculation of Zhao, and he sighs.</p><p>“That’s probably true.” She leans against him, solid and real and untouchable. “If Zhao manages to conquer the Fire Nation, he’ll turn his eye towards the rest of the world.”</p><p>“We’ll stop him,” she says, and even though he’s stripped down to a borrowed shirt and thin, too-short pants, even though he’s soaked from doing laundry, and he’s stuck mending clothes with a bone needle, even though he doesn’t even have his Crown Prince’s pin, even though he’s exiled in a country far from home, her words warm him. He believes her.</p><p>______________________________</p><p>When Katara’s tribe arrive, they sweep her up into their arms, crowding around her, touching her (open, compassionate) face with their mittened hands, stroking her (beautiful, earth-brown) hair, shedding tears over her (dark, rose-accented) skin. A tear spills down her cheek, and she clutches the elders to herself, and all the children gather round her feet and pull at her long, blue robes.</p><p>An old woman holds her the longest, and when she breaks away, she beckons Zuko forward with a curled, arthritic finger. The winter cold must be agony to her joints.</p><p>“Katara, you have finally brought home a husband.” Her tone is less than enthusiastic. Zuko wonders at the word finally, Katara is young to be married, only nineteen; he is scarcely of an acceptable age, and he is almost twenty two.</p><p>“Gran-Gran, this is Zuko.” Zuko bowed deeply to his wife’s grandmother, and he waits for her to bid him stand. When Katara clears her throat, he realizes no such invitation will come, and he straightens himself out, and the old woman peers up at him with rheumy blue eyes.</p><p>“Fire Nation,” her grandmother spits, disapprovingly, and he doesn’t blame her. She touches his cheek, and he doesn’t flinch, because he’s grown used to the casual way Katara and her people touch each other. Her fingers are cold, her grip harsh, her eyes severe. “You will have strong children,” she proclaims, and she leaves him standing in the falling snow.</p><p>He tries to catch Katara’s eye to gauge an appropriate response to this statement, but she won’t look at him.</p><p>______________________________</p><p>That evening, the tribe gathers in the glacierstone building, and sits on soft pelts around a roaring fire in the center of the room, and an elderly man stands up and recites the tribe’s news in meter, his voice roiling like the ocean sea. Fourteen babies born this summer, six marriage ceremonies finalized, an abundance of animals for hunting, a surfeit of fish for fishing, a slight shortage of herbs due to an unseasonable storm, but nothing unweatherable. And then, he calls up a little boy, perhaps six, and says, “Laluk has demonstrated competence in the ancient art of waterbending.” Beside him, Katara tenses. She’d told him waterbenders had been discovered in two of the other tribes, but amongst her people, she has been alone in her talent.</p><p>Laluk, perhaps six, waves his hands, and a drop of water materializes on his finger, and falls to the floor.</p><p>The tribe erupts into adulation. The old men stamp their feet, the women clap their hands, and the little children look on in wonder. Laluk turns red from the attention, but his smile stretches across his face, and he draws another drop of moisture from the air. First one, then another, take up his name, chanting in unison, turning the great stone building into one resounding echo of <em>Laluk, Laluk, Laluk.</em></p><p>(Zuko’s grandfather almost ended this. He almost incinerated the clear, joyous laughs of the merry people. He came so close, and Ozai would have finished his work.)</p><p>Beside him, Katara begins to cry, not loud, hacking sobs, but slight shudders that rend his heart. Her cheeks are wet, her eyes are scrunched up, and she leans towards him. He breaks his seiza to draw her to him. She goes willingly, she buries her face in his neck, and he strokes her long, loose hair with his hands.</p><p>“I’m not alone,” she says, and her voice cracks. “Zuko, I’m not alone.”</p><p>“You’re not,” he says. “You’re not, you won’t be.” It’s a promise, and he knows he should not make it. But she doesn’t pull away from him until her tears ease, and she looks up at him from wet lashes. (Her eyes are bluer than the shallow sea at noon, and deeper than the black rift south of Fire Foundation City.)</p><p>“I’m so, so happy.” Her voice is hoarse, and he can feel her heartbeat in her wrist, a swift staccato.</p><p>She belongs here, with her people. She deserves the joy of training little Laluk in the intricacies of his art. She should never be forced to know separation from her people again. She should have peace. Her children should grow up in a world where war is a distant memory. </p><p>He will leave her, when the time comes. He will go home and make his world right, for his people, of course, but also for hers.</p><p>______________________________</p><p>After the announcement, an old woman stands and begins to sing in odd, lilting language he does not recognize, and the children are released to mingle with the tribe.</p><p>Katara holds a two year old in her lap, a little girl who buries her fingers in the short fur of Katara’s hem, and lies contentedly in Katara’s arms.</p><p>He’d known he’d have to have children, of course. His uncle told him that it was ideal to have babies early in an arranged marriage, so husband and wife could bond over their shared fondness for their offspring. (Zuko had hinted obliquely at the example of his own father and mother, and Iroh had allowed for exceptions.) But while he’d spent a lot of time imagining how children might happen, he’d never thought much past the moment his uncle would offer him a celebratory tea when he announced the child’s conception.</p><p>He’d never seen a toddler’s  button-nose wrinkle right before she sneezed, or observed the tiny, perfect segments of her fingers. He wonders if the baby’s eyes are blue-</p><p>and then Katara is handing the child to him.</p><p>“Katara!” He protests. “I don’t know what to do with it.”</p><p>“Don’t drop her,” she says, deadpan. And he has to hold out his arms to take the blue-clad little girl, and when he does, she whimpers and reaches back for Katara, and he flushes because of course even the babies of her tribe would hate him, but his body temperature rises with his blush, and she stops struggling, and instead, she coos.</p><p>He’s never heard a sound like that. The narrow capillaries in his lungs expand, his heart dissolves into a pool of liquid warmth, the low fire in his spirit flares. His hands of their own accord draw the child to his chest, and she presses herself against him, nosing towards the warmth of his body like an unweaned laprabbit.</p><p>“You’re a natural,” Katara says. He’s aware that no one’s paying attention to the old woman chanting near the fire. He’s aware of the eyes on him, from every corner, and he’s aware that if the girl’s mother wasn’t currently somewhere else, the child would be snatched out of his arms.</p><p>But he’s also aware, for the first time, that children have soft skin and achingly large eyes and fingers that clutch at whatever you put in their palms.</p><p>The girl falls asleep on him, and her drool leaves a disgusting wet patch on his shoulder. Crown Prince Zuko of the Fire Nation, heir apparent of the Dragon of the West, does not mind. </p><p>______________________________</p><p>The next evening, Katara dumps a set of twins in his lap, noisy, rambunctious boys of four who are decidedly not interested in sleeping on his shoulder. They scramble over him and fight his grip and they only still when he promises to tell them the story of the great blackfish who walked on land. </p><p>He’s lucky Katara educated him so thoroughly in her people’s childhood stories. He spins the tale as best he can, mimicking Katara’s intonation, trying to make his voice rise and fall like the sea. When he finishes, the boys are calmer, and he finds Hakoda’s eyes on him. He flushes when the chief crosses to sit beside him, and fears he has told a tale that has no place on an alien's tongue.</p><p>“Is it common practice for Fire Nation princes to tell Water Tribe stories?” He asks. Zuko wants to bow respectfully, but his arms are filled with children, so he settles for lowering his eyes.</p><p>“I apologize if I have disrespected your oral tradition, Chieftain Hakoda. I will not do so again.”</p><p>“It was not a criticism, Prince Zuko,” Hakoda says. “Merely a question.”</p><p>“Katara and I told each other tales as we traveled,” he says. “Most were unfamiliar to me, but I enjoyed learning them.”</p><p>“You speak the story-meter well, especially for a foreigner.”</p><p>“I am well trained in poetry, Chieftain, and your daughter is an excellent storyteller.”</p><p>“She is,” he muses. One of the boys pulls Zuko’s hair, and he untangles the child’s suspiciously sticky hand gently. He’s aware of the chief’s eyes on his motions, and he tries desperately to feign ignorance of the man’s observation. “You’ve been doing women’s work,” he says. Zuko gets the sense that he ought to be ashamed of it from the man’s tone, but he has found nothing truly objectionable in his labors. He dips his head.  “Now that the tribe has arrived, I believe it would be best for you to participate in more masculine activities. Tomorrow, you will accompany Bato and Urunak and Naka and myself on a small fishing expedition.”</p><p>“Yes, chieftain,” he says. The man smiles in a way that Zuko finds somewhat chilling.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0013"><h2>13. Doubt Thou the Stars Are Fire, Doubt the Sun Doth Move</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Zuko dreams he is his mother's cremator, but her body is missing, and there is no flesh for his fire to consume. Her spirit flutters around his face, weeping with bloodshot eyes, pleading for peace but unable to find it. He awakens with tears on his cheeks and finds Katara tense, her limbs stiff. Hakoda and Kanna sleep peacefully on the other side of the igloo, and he sits up, slowly, intending to wake her. Right before he touches her she jerks upright, her eyes wild, her breath ragged, ice already gathered by her palms.</p><p>The bad dream, then. The one with Yon Rha. His heart clenches.</p><p>Her hand reaches for his, grasping for him in the dark, and he clasps her fingers to his heart, the heat of his palms melting the ice to water that drips down the length of his arm, chilling him.</p><p>Fire and water are not meant to be together. Balance is maintained by counterparts, not opposites, and the moon is the sea’s counterpart, not the sun.</p><p>But the last of her ice melts away, and she doesn’t take her hand back. Her fingers remain, cool and slender, in his hand.</p><p>He’s not the sun. He’s an exile. She’s not the ocean; she’s (kind, brave, compassionate, powerful, quick-witted, proactive, secretive, beautiful, brown-tressed, lazuli-eyed, sun-stone-skinned) Katara.</p><p>She may as well be the sea, for all he can hope to comprehend her. </p><p>______________________________</p><p>Zuko has always risen early, drawn out of bed by the surging energy of the sun. But in the all consuming cold of the poles, where the sky is light for less than four hours in autumn, and each day loses a few minutes more to the dark, he struggles to drag himself from the warm pile of skins. His bending has felt different for a while, his inner flame has guttered where it usually flares, and he is always weary, always on the edge of exhaustion.</p><p>Why had his ancestors even wanted this land of darkness and ice? What good would it do the Fire Nation to possess a place that would be impossible for them to rule during the winter?</p><p>Hakoda touches his shoulder, and he doesn’t flinch. He’s tired, tired, tired, he knows he should sleep more, should eat more, should practice his bending, should be an Agni-damned prince and stop subsisting on charity, he should stop holding babies at night and listening like a child to Water Tribe stories, he should do something about his unburied mother and uncle.</p><p>They were immolated, he reminds himself. Their spirits have been set free. (They haunt him at night, their presence has sapped his strength.)</p><p>He’s still clutching Katara’s hand in his, but if Hakoda sees this, he says nothing of it. He untangles his fingers from hers, careful not to wake her.</p><p>He dresses in his borrowed furs and pulls on his warm, expensive boots, and he slides his hands into Sokka’s old gloves, and he trails after Hakoda like one of the scuttlepusses that hang around the wharfs of the Fire Nation, eating innards gutted by the fishermen, and searching out places to sleep in the sun. </p><p>“There’s a lot of things a man does to welcome his daughter’s husband into his tribe,” Hakoda says. His words are muffled by the sealfox fur wrapped around his mouth, and by the vicious wind that tears through the narrow streets and slices his skin with sharp-edged cold. Zuko’s uncle never talked about anything serious without a pot of tea and an excess of ritual. Zuko always knew how to behave, it was one of his uncle’s mercies. He could simply sit in his seiza, and allow years of courtesy to flow from him. It’s uncouth to discuss business while walking down a street. “And since neither you nor Katara seem willing to dissolve your union, it’s important that I fulfill my role as your father by marriage. Ordinarily, the initiation is designed to test the strengths of the young men, and to determine which among them might, in their own time, make decent chiefs. I trust you will take no offense when I assure you that you will never hold my office.” If Zuko thinks about it, Hakoda’s words almost seem like a joke.</p><p>“I hold no aspiration for it,” he says, politely, just in case.</p><p>“Fishing is the simplest of the tasks. The first creature you draw from the water you will present to your wife, and she will slice it open. Ideally, her mother would read the entrails to determine your future, but her grandmother will have to perform the ceremony.” </p><p>“Alright,” Zuko says. He’s seen the Fire Sages perform the yearly expisticy of a flying python, the closest creature left to a dragon, and he’s comforted by the knowledge that there are similar practices in the other Nations. But he remembers Katara’s discussion of marriage, and his curiosity masters him. “Katara told me that marriage isn’t valid in the Southern Water Tribe until a child is born.”</p><p>“She’s old to be unwed,” Hakoda says, and Zuko frowns.</p><p>“She’s nineteen.”</p><p>“She’s almost twenty. My wife and I were sixteen when we swore our oaths, although Sokka did not come until a few years later. Katara has been excused from expectations because of her role as the- as a teacher, but the older she gets, the more tradition has weighed on her, especially as my daughter, and as a waterbender. You’re welcome to wait for a child, of course-”</p><p>“No, no,” Zuko says, hurriedly. “No, that’s alright. It’s just, in the Fire Nation, I’m young to be married, and I’m two years older than she is.”</p><p>“Hm,” Hakoda grunts. “I had assumed your people married younger than we did, seeing how great your need for soldiers was.”</p><p>“We used to,” Zuko says. “In one of the epic cycles, the sequence about Tamar-Lah, he marries a girl of just fourteen. But Fire Lord Sozin outlawed marriages for any citizen younger than twenty two, because he instituted a mandatory four year military service, and he believed that stronger children would be born to women who had experienced battle.” Hakoda halts in his tracks, and Zuko wonders if he has offended him by speaking of Sozin so freely.</p><p>“You send your women into war?” He questions, his tone horrified.</p><p>“Not since the advent of the New Peace,” Zuko says. “But yes, we used to.”</p><p>“The battlefield is no place for a woman,” Hakoda says. Zuko remembers what happened to his wife, and he does not protest that Lo and Li were among the most accomplished field generals during Azulon’s reign, and they were not even benders. </p><p>“Katara can beat me, depending on the phase of the moon,” he says. “And my sister is the most powerful firebender in our generation.” Hakoda grunts at this, and both fall silent. The snow sifts softly from the ashen sky, and sizzles when it touches Zuko’s skin. Hakoda offers him a strip of dried meat, and he eats without tasting.</p><p>The embers in his stomach flicker dully. The sun will rise today, and warm him. The long stretches of dark are coming, but not yet. (A firebender needs the sun the way a plant needs light, he is not lichen; he cannot flourish in the dark.)</p><p>Hakoda watches him eat, and watches him stand, watches him as they walk beside each other, through the thin, falling snow, towards the harbor. The other two men, Bato and a stranger (Urunak, his mind supplies) have already drawn a canoe down from the drydock, and have laid it in the water. </p><p>Bato embraces Hakoda, and Urunak clasps his arm. The tribesmen do not bow to each other, or even to their elders. Instead they touch, their gestures almost ritual, but too filled with emotion to be fully formalized.</p><p>They don’t touch him. They ignore him, a little scuttlepuss in Hakoda’s wake. Bato and Hakoda lower the canoe into the water, as Urunak is burdened with a large sack that Zuko imagines contains the implements for fishing. (He’s not great at fishing. The fish had been the worst part of his Labor of Endurance. If they want him to find a pygmy ant, he’d probably have more luck.)</p><p>“Hop in, Prince Zuko,” Bato says, and Zuko intensely dislikes the man’s smile, but he does as he’s told (and no, he does not almost tip the canoe over, he’s been trained since birth in the graceful art of firebending, he always has complete control of his body.) And Urunak hands him a paddle, then leaps in himself, lightly, then Hakoda, and then Bato shoves them off from shore and joins them. The canoe scarcely rocks as they settle into it.</p><p>“It’s tradition for the chief’s son to set the paddle-song,” Bato says, and his voice is smug, his tone anticipatory. “Of course, you are welcome to delegate the task, should you choose.”</p><p>Politeness dictates that Zuko say nothing. He’s nothing, he’s nobody, he’s just a guest, and it is beyond rude to humiliate your host, even if your host humiliates you.</p><p>But he’s washed their clothes and held their children and he’s not going to suddenly decide to burn up their city, and even if he wanted to, with only the weak glow of the failing sun, he doesn’t know if he could. </p><p>“You’ll have to forgive me,” he says, and he observes how Bato smiles. (He grew up in terror of failure. Does the tribesman truly think he will be so bothered by his lack of knowledge about a song? His father used to burn him with singeing fingertips for misremembered lessons or inadequate stances.)  “I’m not sure which one is more suitable, the petral song, the foaming-waters song, or perhaps another.” He glances at Hakoda, to see if the chieftain is bothered by his impertinence. The man is most definitely smiling, his eyes are positively gleaming with amusement.</p><p>“Well, Bato?” he asks, and Zuko hears the laugh curled round the edges of his words. Katara sounds the same way, when she’s amused and is trying to hide it.  “What’s your preference, the petral song or the foaming-waters song?”</p><p>“The petral song is fine,” the helmsman says, gruffly, and Zuko’s glad, because he only really knows the first three verses of the other. He has an alright voice, nowhere near as decent as Lu Ten’s was, or his uncle, but not abysmal either. He sings the song the way Katara taught him, and if he’s less than proficient with his paddle, at least Hakoda doesn’t mention it.</p><p>
  <em>petrel slipping through grey water</em>
  <br/>
  <em>bright moon gleaming in the sky</em>
  <br/>
  <em>petrel wings white welkin cleaving</em>
  <br/>
  <em>silver starlight sundering</em>
  <br/>
  <em>petral dipping on the downdraft</em>
  <br/>
  <em>shoal of bream in silver light</em>
  <br/>
  <em>petral soaring over sea ice</em>
  <br/>
  <em>white moon rising in his wake</em>
  <br/>
  <em>petral gliding on the east wind</em>
  <br/>
  <em>riven water shadows shade-</em>
</p><p>He sings, drawing the words from his bones, feeling the way the paddle melds to his cold hands, and the way his song melds to his paddle. He comes to the end of the verses he knows, but the old chant still unspools from him, regular as the tide, drawing him on and out, he’s never sung for so long, never held a meter steady in his throat without knowing the words, he’s never felt a poem pulled out of him before, not even when he attempts to set verse on parchment, but he surrenders himself to the fire simmering in his stomach, and he sings up the sun.</p><p>Hakoda and Bato and Urunak are all looking at him when the last note dies on his lips, and he shivers from the sudden cold that suffuses his bones, and from the ache the unfamiliar paddle has left in his arms.</p><p>“Well done,” Hakoda says, and Zuko is surprised at the way his stomach warms at the man’s compliment. He does not doubt the chieftain's sincerity, and he is pleased that he has pleased him.</p><p>______________________________</p><p>They fish until the sun sets, and Urunak sings a song about winter starlight as they paddle back. Zuko’s little minnow swims in a bucket of chilled water, and when Bato teases him, he merely flushes and looks away. At least he managed to catch something.</p><p>Katara is healing a little boy’s scraped leg when he finds her, and he watches the water glow as she presses it against the child’s skin. Her voice is soft, her tone soothing, and when she finishes, the child springs up and races out the igloo without a backwards glance. She embraces her father, and Hakoda smiles at her.</p><p>“Zuko sang the paddle-song,” he says. “And he did so quite admirably.” Zuko feels himself redden, and when Katara grins at him, he blushes further.</p><p>“What kind of fish did he catch?” She asks.</p><p>“Just a minnow,” he says, and he’s surprised when she nods thoughtfully.</p><p>“It’s a good sign,” Hakoda says, his tone serious. “A minnow means you will never want for friendship, either of you, as long as you are true.”</p><p>Kanna hobbles over from her place by the fire, and Zuko winces at the way she rubs her arthritic fingers. Katara slices off the minnow’s head, and Kanna slits its stomach, spilling its tiny intestines onto a bed of white snow.</p><p>“You will have strong children,” she says, picking through the guts, and she sits backwards, apparently done.</p><p>“Gran-Gran,” Katara protests. “You’ve already told us that.”</p><p>“You will face a choice,” Kanna says, her eyes shut. “But you have already chosen; the path lies before you unseen but well tended.”</p><p>“Gee, thanks,” Katara says, but her words are light. “Come on Zuko, I promised I’d look after the twins until the meeting tonight, and their dad said they’ve been asking for you all day. They really liked your story, it seems.” She takes his hand and he does not allow himself to breathe in the sweet musk of fire and lye and dried herbs that veils her lithe body.</p><p>______________________________</p><p>That evening, Zuko seats himself before the roaring fire, and finds its warmth almost capable of driving out the chill of the sun’s absence. Katara sits beside him, a baby in her arms, and another child resting on her lap. Little Laluk sits opposite her, and he mimics everything she does, right down to scratching his nose with his wrist.</p><p>“You have an admirer,” he comments dryly, and she smiles.</p><p>“I showed him the first form today, and he actually gathered a palmful of water. He was quite pleased. And here come your admirers!” He sees the twins hanging off their mother, but when they spot him, they bolt, and practically leap into his arms.</p><p>“I’m cold!” One proclaims, and the other nods, and both burrow beneath his arms.</p><p>“Hey Tita, Katu, where’s your baby sister?” Katara asks, with a sly grin. </p><p>“Katara!” He pleads, but Titu is already up.</p><p>“I’ll get her!” He exclaims, and he tears off. He returns with not just a two year old girl, but another boy about his age, and a girl his sister’s age, and all three wedge themselves against Zuko.</p><p>“Warmer!” Katu demands. “Warmer, warmer!” And Zuko has no choice but to obligingly raise his body temperature, and the children press into him, absorbing his warmth. The effort leaves him shaking; he's never struggled to warm himself before, but the children do not notice or complain. They simply burrow closer, eyes shut, like little lizards sunning themselves on a rock.</p><p>They’re too young to have known war, he realizes. They have no reason to flee in terror from his golden eyes, no cause to mistrust those who wield fire. If Zhao wins, he will send warships south, belching black smoke and raining black ash down on the peaceful villages. In the Fire Nation, Iroh’s Beneficent Concessions will be repealed, and the War Minister will once again call up every able-bodied youth to fill the depleted ranks of the military.</p><p>The children’s parents watch him, but they do not prevent him from holding them. And when a sixth child curls herself against his back, he doesn’t even have to look at Katara to know that she is smiling.</p><p>______________________________</p><p>The days pass, one after another. He grows used to the strange food and the strange customs and the strange blue clothes of the Southern Water Tribe. Hakoda shows him how to carve a bone hilt knife, how to harvest antlers, how to hunt with a polar dog, and how to quarry ice. Katara takes her meals at his side, she teaches Laluk, she spars with him infrequently, although as the sun disappears his fire grows weaker until he is all but incapable of calling flame to his hands. More and more children come to him at night, crowding around him, drenching him in their affections. He learns how to braid hair, how to tie laces, how to soothe and coddle and still.</p><p>He teaches some of the older boys how to sing in meter.</p><p>He cannot sleep at night without seeing his uncle’s mournful face, and remembering the way he betrayed him.</p><p>On the final day of sunlight, when the sun just barely crosses the horizon, and sets within minutes, his strength falters, and Hakoda tells him to sleep. He wants to protest, but his head is too heavy for him to hold it upright, so he lies down on his pallet and he dreams.</p><p>He awakens in the dark to find Katara above him, her face twisted in concern, her hands cool on his shoulder. He feels deeply chilled, he wants only to slip back into sleep, but when he turns away, Katara touches his face.</p><p>“Zuko, please, you have to eat.”</p><p>“I’m tired,” he murmurs, and she shakes him insistently.</p><p>“Zuko, it’s been two days, you have to eat.” Her words startle him. He realizes that his stomach feels empty, and he knows his inner fire is scarcely more than a single ember. “Please Zuko, eat.” She presses a bowl of lukewarm stew into his hands, and he cannot even stomach the strength to warm it, but he forces it down his throat all the same.</p><p>“I’m so cold,” he says, and her face twists.</p><p>“You’re not going to- you’re not allowed to die. Promise me, Zuko.”</p><p>“Maybe I deserve to,” he says. The stew chills the fire in his stomach further, he needs the sun’s strength to rouse him, he has never felt so weak, not even after his father’s burn.</p><p>“Zuko!” She protests, her voice horrified. His dreams haunt him.</p><p>“I betrayed my uncle,” he tells her. “I told him to divorce us and let me go to Zhao. Broke my vow. Lied to you.”</p><p>“Do you still want that?” She asks, her voice soft.</p><p>“No,” he says. “But I did, so-”</p><p>“You’re not going to die,” she insists, her voice harsh. “I won’t let you.”</p><p>“Can’t help it,” he protests, his eyes already slipping shut.</p><p>______________________________</p><p>Hakoda wakes him next, his face a mask of concern.</p><p>“Zuko,” he says, softly. “Zuko, Katara’s helping birth a baby; she said to make sure you eat.”</p><p>“Not hungry,” he says. “I haven’t helped, I don’t want-”</p><p>“Don’t worry about that,” Hakoda says. “You’ve done plenty, and we have plenty. Eat.” He spoons broth into Zuko’s mouth, rich and fatty, freezing against his tongue.</p><p>“Too cold,” he protests.</p><p>“It’s steaming, Zuko,” Hakoda says. He can see the steam rising from the bowl, but his stomach does not lie. The broth freezes him. “Eat the bowl, no guest of mine will starve himself. It would be very rude.” Zuko knows he’s joking, but he also knows it would look terrible for a guest to perish in his host’s care, so he forces himself to swallow it, mouthful by mouthful. Hakoda brushes his hand against Zuko’s head, and recoils. “You’re burning up. I’ve never felt a fever like that.”</p><p>“Sorry,” he says, and Hakoda shakes his head.</p><p>“Don't be sorry. I haven’t gotten to tend one of my children in years,” he says. “You remind me of Sokka when he was younger.”</p><p>“Is he your favorite?” Zuko asks, because the way Hakoda says the boy’s name makes it impossible for Zuko to imagine that Katara holds that honor.</p><p>“My favorite?” Hakoda questions, and he sounds surprised. “No, of course not, I love them both equally. They’re my children, I don't have favorites.”</p><p>“Dad loved Zula more,” he says. He wonders what was in the broth, because he does not talk about this, not with strangers, not with outsiders, not even with family, but the words flee him just like his body heat, and he can’t recall them. “Mom loved me, but Dad loved Zula. Hated me. Thought maybe I wasn’t his, but I was. If I’d been Uncle’s then he would’ve hated me for a reason, but I was his, and he hated me.”</p><p>“Zuko,” Hakoda’s voice is soft. “Zuko, no.”</p><p>“He burned me,” Zuko says. “Not just my face. I was a bad son, couldn’t bend, I couldn’t fight. Zula wasn’t like me, she was strong. And then he was going to kill me, because Grandfather said he had to if he wanted my uncle’s throne, and he wanted to-” he’s crying. His tears warm his cheeks, at least, and Hakoda pulls him to his chest.</p><p>The chieftain is warm, and he strokes Zuko’s hair with a calloused palm. His touch is nothing like Zuko’s mother’s, but he finds it comforting. The room is frigid, but he knows he must have a fever, because the colors are too bright.</p><p>“I wrote letters to your uncle,” Hakoda says. “He always spoke so highly of you. He told me how you cared for your people, how you listen to their grievances, how you strove to learn your lessons, how gentle you were with the ill and injured. He said you would be a good Fire Lord. Any man should be proud to call you his son. Your uncle was.”</p><p>“I betrayed him,” Zuko cries, and the room spins, and the frigid stew roils in his stomach. </p><p>“But you’ve repented of it,” Hakoda says. “And you’re going to keep the New Peace, you and Katara together. Lie down, Zuko.” He does, and Hakoda begins to sing a rowing song. The meter lulls Zuko’s mind to sleep, and for the first time in weeks, he does not suffer nightmares.</p><p>______________________________</p><p>He is on the edge of a vast cliff, and beneath him a river of fire runs southward towards the sea.</p><p>“What do you want?” Agni hisses, and he drops to his knees, his cheeks wet, his palms outstretched.</p><p>“My people, my mother, my uncle, please,-”</p><p>“I have told you,” Agni says. “You must complete your pilgrimage to become my instrument.”</p><p>“I’m so cold,” Zuko says, because despite the fire’s heat, his insides are frozen.</p><p>“Where there is life, there I am,” the fire says.</p><p>______________________________</p><p>Katara shakes him awake, and he blinks his eyes blearily.</p><p>“Get up,” she says. His muscles are weak, he cannot manage it, but she pulls him upright until he is sitting before the fire, and she eases him into his coat, her movements sure. It’s blizzarding outside, and the sun is absent, he is so, so cold. He tries to draw warmth from the embers in his stomach, and finds that he is burnt up almost to ashes.</p><p>“I’m dying,” he whispers, and she shakes her head.</p><p>“You’re not allowed to,” she says. “Come on, stand up. Lean on me.” She guides him upright, and he rests his weight against her. She’s going to drain his remaining chi, she’s going to kill him if she drags him from the warmth of the fire to the dark of the antarctic winter, but he has no strength to protest. She gloves and boots him, and herself, and then pulls him out into the night.</p><p>The sun’s absence agonizes him, each breath sends shards of liquid ice into his lungs. He can feel the cold air leeching his heat away; he barely has the strength to stumble alongside Katara through the snow. She leads him underground, and at least it’s a touch warmer, but he knows that without the sunlight, he will not last much longer. Perhaps a week, if days can even mean anything without the sun. His body is wasting, his muscles are desiccated, his stomach has contracted into a ball the size of his eye. She pulls him, and because he loves her, he does not protest.</p><p>She leads him through the dark tunnel lighted only occasionally by torches, he walks and does not complain, even when his hood slips off and the cold air whistles round his ear. When she looks over and sees this, she makes him stop so she can fix it. Then the tunnel slopes upwards, and they are walking out. It is not blizzarding anymore. The air is still, and calm, and clear. The stars gleam from the high house of heaven.</p><p>She sits him down in the snow, and he falters and falls backwards. The starts glimmer above him, untouchable, beautiful. He wonders if he is the first firebender since Roku to behind the polar sky in winter, and his heart clenches.</p><p>He is so, so cold, and so, so tired.</p><p>“This will work,” Katara says. “It has to, I know it will.” He cannot even muster the strength to question her.</p><p>But in that moment, a single green light flickers across the edge of the horizon, and the ashes in his stomach pulse faintly. Another green and yellow light bursts across his vision and vanishes, and he feels a flicker from a long-cold coal. Directly above him, a flicker of red tinged with yellow flares and expands, turning to green, stretching to encompass the dome of heaven, and he sits upright, gasping, feeling his stomach heat.</p><p>“Aurora,” Katara says, her voice soft. A long, sustained flare jerks him upright, sends a pulse of fire through his blood, and then he is awake, truly, terribly awake, he can feel himself warm, he can feel the ice fleeing him, he laughs out loud at the beauty and the grandeur and the splendor of the sky ablaze with fire without the sun.</p><p>“Katara,” he says, breathless, and she looks at him, bundled in her blue coat, her hands gloved, her eyes wet with tears. “Katara, Katara-” he embraces her, and she embraces him, they cling to each other, wrapped in white fur and blue fabric, their cheeks wet with tears, while above him, the aurora shimmers green against the frigid aether. </p><p>“Is it enough?” She asks him, her throat clogged with tears, and he holds her closer, feeling the fire in his stomach flare in tandem with the fire in the sky.</p><p>“More than,” he says.</p><p>He eats heartily when they return to Hakoda’s igloo, and although he can feel himself wearying, he is not half so weak as before. He wraps himself up in his bedroll, and when Katara slips in beside him and draws herself against him, he allows himself to trace the delicate curve of her cheek.</p><p>He does not dream when she is in his arms.</p>
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<a name="section0014"><h2>14. This Must Be Known, Which, Being Kept Close, Might Move More Grief to Hide than Hate to Utter Love</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>“Zuko,” Hakoda says, drawing his attention from his embroidery by the fireplace. Kanna’s fingers are far too stiff to permit her to easily slip thread and needle through the stiff blue felt, and Katara has no love for the task, so he has taken it over. The stitches the Water Tribe prefers are different from the ones he learned as a child, the gut he sews with is sturdier than the thin fabrics of his youth, the colors of the threads are less vibrant, the fabric he handles is heavier, the patterns larger, but he is hopeful that when he finishes the parka, Hakoda will be willing to overlook its flaws.</p><p>“Yes?” He asks.</p><p>“What have you made?” Hakoda asks, and Zuko holds up the patch of fabric for the chieftain’s inspection. He has stylized a meander and wave motif around the felt edges, and in the center, he has outlined a blackfish soaring above a reflection of a silver crescent moon.</p><p> “I should have realized your embroidery tended towards more angular shapes than rounded ones,” he says, apologetically. “But by the time your mother told me, I had already outlined it, and I didn’t want to waste the fabric or the thread. If you don’t like it-”</p><p>“It’s well made,” Hakoda says. “And I’m grateful that you’re willing to spare my mother’s fingers. I’ll be glad to wear it.” His tone is sincere, his face open and honest. Zuko smiles at the chieftain’s words, and draws his needle through the indigo felt.</p><p>______________________________</p><p>Katara sits beside him as he basks in the gleaming aurora, his face thrown upwards towards heaven, his spine straight, his palms open. He breathes in time to the pulsating fire within and without him, he feels the energy swirling in the atmosphere, and he feels it mirrored within himself.</p><p>“Tita and Katu have asked for you every evening,” she says. “All the kids want to know where the firebender is.” He smiles at her words, and at the easy way warmth seeps through his veins. Her voice is the sound of clear water on beaten brass. Even with his eyes closed, he can see her, her skin obsidian against the snow, her eyes bluer than oxidized copper, her long hair catching glimmers of the aurora’s light and scattering it into the darkness, like veins of bronze scatter torchlight in a mine deep underground. Her teeth, hidden behind her lips of uncut carnelian, flash when she speaks, white and glimmering like opals.</p><p>“I’ve missed the kids too,” he says, before he can say what he’s thinking, which is that she is more precious to him than any gem, that she is lovelier than rubies, that she is dearer than gold.</p><p>“Do you want any?” She asks. Her tone is casual, but he feels her body tense slightly as she asks the question.</p><p>“Um,” he says. “I’ve always known I’d have to have children. But I guess I never really thought about wanting them. My dad- You know my dad. It’s just, in my family, in Sozin’s line,” he’s a terrible member of said line, because quite against his will, his tone is mocking, instead of reverential. “Parents pick favorites. Sozin favored Azulon, Azulon favored Iroh, Ozai favored Azula, and Iroh and my mom favored me.”</p><p>“You won’t be like that,” she says. She waves her hand, as though by a single gesture she can undo a century’s worth of legacy. “If you want kids, that is.”</p><p>When he holds a little child to his chest, they burrow into his warmth. When he rocks a baby in his arms, they shut their eyes and coo in their sleep. When he sings a metered song slowly, so the older children can mimic, their voices hit the accented words hard, drawing the meter to the forefront.</p><p>“I do,” he says. <em>But not with just anyone, Katara.</em> “Do you?”</p><p>“I do,” she says. “I want so many children, I want to have babies and hold them in my arms and know whether they’re waterbenders or not, they’ll grow up to have children of their own. I want to conceive and be happy that I’ve conceived, because I won’t need to fear about my daughters being captured or my sons dying in war. I want my children to see the world in balance, and for them to know peace and plenty.” Her words are melodic, her tone mournful. She deserves peace, and happiness, and to live among her people. She deserves strong children.</p><p>“It can happen,” he says. “We can make balance, even without the Avatar. My uncle almost managed it-”</p><p>”Do you really believe so?" Her voice is hopeful, almost childish.</p><p>"I don't know," he says. "But I know we cannot go on as we have for much longer, Katara. I know something has to change."</p><p>______________________________</p><p>After the gatherings every evening, Katara comes with him, and sits with him as he sits beneath the twisting aurora. He waits for her to grow bored of watching him absorb his element, but instead they fall to talking, telling stories like they did during their long walk overland.</p><p>They sit close to each other, because she grows cold in the snow.</p><p>______________________________</p><p>Zuko is not sulking. Princes and guests do not have the luxury of pouting in a corner, morose and mournful and unhappy on the night of the winter solstice, the second largest festival of the Fire Nation. He hasn’t sulked in years. He’s only disinterested by the unfamiliar Water Tribe dances, and unwilling to leave the warmth of the fire. Even though it is the solstice, the sun still won’t rise for another week and a half, and despite his regular viewings of the aurora, a bit of cold lingers within him.</p><p>Katara is dancing with her seventh man of the evening (he’s not keeping count, she’s allowed to dance with whomever she wants, he’s simply observant), she’s smiling up at her partner, her blue eyes wide, her breath coming in slight gasps. She’s as graceful a dancer as she is a bender, and he is glad for her sake that she can be among her people once more. If he wasn’t currently holding two sleeping toddlers, he’d leave so she would feel free to do more than dance, if she wanted.</p><p>There are couples kissing in the corners. No one’s said as much, but he knows a fertility festival when he sees one. The blood and wheat and wine are blatant giveaways.</p><p>He’s not jealous. Jealousy would be unproductive and unbecoming of a prince. </p><p>“You’ve been here a while,” Hakoda says, sitting down beside him. He’s got a goblet of some kind of grain alcohol, and his movements are slightly off kilter. Zuko shrugs, slightly. </p><p>“Dancing isn’t really very popular in the Fire Nation.” He says.</p><p>“That’s a shame,” Hakoda says. “I’ve always found it frees the spirit.” Zuko grunts noncommittally, and Hakoda sighs. “Do you know the story of how polar dogs came to be among us, Prince Zuko?”</p><p>“No,” he says.</p><p>“Then I’ll tell you,” Hakoda says. “Long ago, when the Nations were newly split and the world was still quite young, our people lived in the great, cold north, in a desert of snow and ice. It was a hard life, and living was far from easy. We wandered freely over the vast plains, driven by hunger and moving at will, living in kin-groups, hunting where we could, fishing what we could. But we were not the only hunters. The wilderness assailed us on all sides, blackfish in the great ocean swallowed our ships, albatross-hawks in the skies above snatched our children, and in the tundra, polar-dogs stalked our hunters. They were a terror to our people, savaging the weak, threatening the elderly, snatching our kills, and harassing our settlements.</p><p>“There was no peace between us. We slaughtered them on sight; they ate our injured when they had the chance. But something strange happened, as the stars spun round the dome of heaven, and the years slipped by into decades. A great hunter came across a litter of pups, weak and famished, near dead from starvation, seven in all. The first six she killed, smashing their heads open on the hard ground, but the seventh she held in her hands, and when she brushed her fingers through the creature’s soft fur, it mewled and looked at her with sea-blue eyes, blue as any of her kinsmen’s eyes.</p><p>“She could not kill it. Her breasts were still taut from the stillborn birth of her son, so she fed the polar dog milk from her own body, and she carried the creature around with her, and laid it beside her when she slept, and coddled it when she awakened. The polar dog grew large, and then grew larger, until it reached its full size, and yet it never so much as bared its teeth at the great hunter. Instead, it ran beside her, attuned to her movements, and it aided her in her hunting, so that her tribe never went hungry.</p><p>“And since then, our people have lived beside the polar dogs, our enmity forgotten, and our friendship unassailable.”</p><p>“I’m thankful to learn another facet of your culture, Chieftain Hakoda,” Zuko says. Hakoda sighs, and sets down his grain alcohol, and takes first one child from Zuko’s arms, then the other, and settles them against his chest. They whimper, unpleased by the cold, and he tries to reach for them to warm them.</p><p>“Zuko,” Hakoda’s voice is firm. “Go dance with my daughter.”</p><p>“Um,” Zuko says, because how is he supposed to respond to that?</p><p>“Just go,” Hakoda says, and Zuko can’t refuse. He stands, and brushes his robes off, trying to make himself at least somewhat presentable. There’s a wet patch on his shoulder from where one of the children had drooled, and the fabric is wrinkled, and he knows his hair is imperfect, but he’s on his feet, and Hakoda is waving him onwards. </p><p>He weaves through the dancing tribesmen, and finds Katara dancing with a boy about his age, her movements deft and fluid. She spins away from her partner, and then she sees him, and he almost flees, because she is so beautiful, so lovely, so alien to him, and he is wrong for wanting to draw her away from her tribe, and towards himself.</p><p>But she comes to him, and she smiles at him, almost shyly.</p><p>“Um,” he says. “I’m not good at it. At all. And probably I’ll step on your toes and make people think you’re married to someone who isn't graceful. Which isn’t true, because I can be graceful. I know how to firebend.” <em>This is not going well.</em> “But your dad told me about how a hunter breastfed a dog-” <em>this is going worse.</em> “And then he said to dance with you. And I want to! Not just because he said so. Although even if I didn’t want to I would, because that’s polite-”</p><p>“Zuko,” she says, gently. “Will you dance with me, please?”</p><p>“Um.” <em>That really should not have worked.</em> “Yes.”</p><p>She twines her slender arm around his shoulders, she takes his left hand in her right, and she moves him gracefully to the music, flowing like water. He doesn’t know what he’s doing, but she is more than competent, she shows him the steps, her fingers guide his movements, and the music surges through him, establishing a path for him to travel. Her eyes meet his, lazuli-blue and wide and glimmering, her lovely, dark skin lies in contrast against his own pale features, her lips are red and plump, her cheeks suffused with warmth, and he marvels when she slots her body against his own, and melds her slender form to his.</p><p>She dances a second dance with him, then a third, then a fourth. She gets him to taste the mulled wine, which he quite likes, and then she makes him dance again, and again, and when he complains of being too hot, she asks if he wants to watch the aurora.</p><p>Watching the aurora means watching her. Of course he says yes.</p><p>He stumbles as she leads him up, away from her dancing tribe, out onto the glacier itself. The night is clear and dark, the sky alight with stars and rivers of green and yellow and red flame.</p><p>His stomach leaps, but not from the aurora. He sits, and she presses close beside him. Undoubtedly she is cold. She is too close for him to meditate, his breath won’t stop heaving, his heart won’t stop pounding like it's trying to wear out his ribs, he can’t handle the agony of her presence, keener than any flash of fire.</p><p>“What are you thinking?” She asks, her question soft. He sucks in a breath, and tries to straighten the jumble in his mind.</p><p>“I see you in similes,” he says, like an idiot. He should not have had an extra glass of the mulled wine, it’s made his head all fuzzy and his words keep tumbling out of his mouth. “I can’t comprehend you. You’re so many things, I have to break you up to understand you. Your eyes are like blue gems and your hair is like the wind made flesh and you bend like you are water, and every poem I’ve ever memorized I think of when I think of you, but the words aren’t close to what you are, and I know you are beyond me, I shouldn’t think of you except how I think of the stars in heaven, kindly but untouchable, but Katara I-”</p><p>Her mouth is hot against his own, her lips chapped from the frigid air. She presses herself into him, she tears off her mittens and twines her fingers in his hair, her lips part and her tongue flicks inside his mouth.</p><p>Kissing her is like summoning fire to his palm, like waking up on the day of the summer solstice, like feeling the sun rise, like immolating himself in Agni’s sacred flame, like-</p><p>He twines his own ungloved fingers in her hair, thick and long and beautiful, he draws her into his embrace, he tastes the wine on her tongue, he feels the ornate embroidery of her thick blue dress beneath his palm.</p><p>“Zuko,” she gasps, and his name on her lips is the loveliest sound he has heard. “Zuko, you can’t know how long I’ve wanted this, how long I’ve wanted you.”</p><p>”I want you, Katara,” he says.</p><p>He is twenty two years old.</p>
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<a name="section0015"><h2>15. As Love Between Them, Like the Palm, Might Flourish, as Peace Should Still Her Wheaten Garland Wear</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>so, I have a tumblr now. I'm ekphrastic, so reach out and say hi or whatever it is people do on tumblr! https://www.tumblr.com/blog/ekphrastic</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>When Zuko was twelve, after his headaches had mostly gone away, and his vision had returned to the point that he was able to read without too much difficulty, his uncle had seated him before an enormous rack of scrolls, records stretching back almost a century.</p><p>“The first act of my Beneficent Concessions is unconditional amnesty,” his uncle had said. “In conjunction with the Earth Kingdom and the Water Tribes, all war prisoners will be released, from the lowest footsoldier to General Kanak. In exchange, our records will be wiped clean. There will be no trials, no prosecutions, no retributive actions. The war will be placed behind us.” </p><p>Zuko said nothing. The War had always been, it was the righteous, brilliant light of progress rising up from the darkness of ignorance and barbarism. To speak against the War was to speak against the Fire Lord, and thus the Fire Nation. For the Fire Lord to speak against the war meant the Fire Lord was speaking against himself, and that didn't seem right.</p><p>“Why can’t we hold trials, Prince Zuko?” Iroh asked. He’d recently begun to do this, questioning Zuko. Unlike his father’s questions, which were impossible to parse, and which he was punished for misunderstanding or incorrectly answering, Iroh never struck him for his responses. </p><p>“We would have to put the Earth Kingdom soldiers in jail for doing things like collapsing New Azulon City? And the Water Tribe soldiers for raiding and being pirates? And that would make them mad and want to do the war again?”</p><p>“You mustn't ask questions when you answer them, Prince Zuko,” his uncle said, but he spoke mildly, and he didn’t seem like he was going to press a burning fingertip into Zuko’s arm to make sure he learned his lesson. All the same, Zuko leaned backwards when his uncle leaned forwards. “You’re right that imprisoning members of the other nations would anger them, even if they committed atrocities according to our laws and deserve punishment. But there’s another reason, Prince Zuko. If we demand trials for our wronged civilians, then the other nations will have the right and duty to demand trials for theirs.”</p><p>“The Fire Nation doesn’t attack civilians,” Zuko said, in a tone completely inappropriate for an heir addressing his Fire Lord. “That’s what the rebels and anarchists and terrorists do.”</p><p>“In war a lot of ugly things are done in the name of victory,” Iroh said, ignoring Zuko’s outburst. “It’s not enough to have a clever strategy, to win a decisive battle, to capture an important general. War isn’t just pitched duels at sunbreak, Prince Zuko. To win a war you have to break your enemy, snap their will, splinter their strength, shatter their resistance. If you leave them with hope, they’ll think of ways to make their hopes reality. And to crush hope, you need to crush the people.”</p><p>“But that’s not honorable!” Zuko protested. “The Fire Nation is always honorable-”</p><p>“Do you see this wall of records?” Iroh asked. “Do you see these shelves, piled floor to ceiling with scrolls?” Iroh’s voice grew strained, and Zuko heard the anger behind it.</p><p>“Yes, Fire Lord.”</p><p>“These scrolls contain an account of every action undertaken against a noncombatant over the course of Sozin’s Expansion. There are rules for how soldiers must conduct themselves in war, Prince Zuko, rules that our soldiers were trained to recite, and conditioned to ignore. It’s difficult to conquer if you’re merciful. But having a standing army can pose a threat. Sozin permitted atrocities, and Azulon after him, and Ozai after him, but the Fire Lords were wise. They kept careful count of every ill deed, and if a soldier seemed as though he leaned towards rebellion, his crimes, or those of his kinsmen, would be brought to light. You’re going to read them, Prince Zuko, every word, and you’re going to commit to memory the worst atrocities, and those committed against the ruling families of the other nations. It is an unpleasant labor, but as the future Fire Lord, you must understand what was done in your name.”</p><p>He was too young to fully comprehend the words he read, and his understanding was diminished by the strange way in which the scrolls were written. Everything was euphemistic, and he didn’t know half of what the euphemisms stood in reference too. Abortive blows he learned, far from referring to an ineffectual firebending form, which was what he had first thought, meant a forced miscarriage.  Unlicensed elimination of juvenile noncombatants meant infanticide, which meant killing children too young to speak. Premature immolation of animate enemies meant burning people alive. Removal of potentially hostile noncombatants to disadvantageous areas meant leaving Water Tribe children out in the snow to die of cold. Coercive polyandry, when defined for him in the clipped, clinical tones of the Court Historian, left him so physically sick that it brought on another one of his migraines, and he wasn’t able to read for a week. </p><p>His mother had visited him, sponging his head with cool water, and he’d heard her arguing with Iroh in a tone far too vicious to ever be directed at the Fire Lord.</p><p>“He’s a boy, Iroh! He’s twelve!”</p><p>“He’s swallowed the lies whole, Ursa. If I can’t make him see the War for what it was, not what his storybooks and plays and teachers said it was, he’ll have no reason to maintain the peace when he is older. I’m not a young man anymore, I may have thirty years left, or six months.”</p><p>“He’s a child, there’s still time for him to be a child-” </p><p>He waited for the slap, for the sound of his mother’s deep, racking sobs, but nothing happened. His mother entered his room and kissed his forehead, and she sat vigil beside him until the colors stopped bursting behind his ruined eye, and he was able to sit upright again.</p><p>After that, he had been fed a hearty breakfast, and had been sent back to his reading. It took him a full season to make his way through the records, and when he finished the final scroll detailing Ozai’s forced displacement of Fire Nation citizens (Fire Nation!) from their ancestral valley to make room for a hydroelectric dam, he handed the scroll back to the Court Historian, and he had walked all the way to the Fire Lord’s audience chamber, which he had never dared to do before. The Crown Prince’s pin in his hair permitted him entrance, and he was impressed at how the guards bowed to him, because before, they had only ever tilted their heads, but now they bent at the waist, and didn’t rise until his shadow passed over their own.</p><p>Iroh wasn’t seated behind his wall of flames when he entered. Instead, he and General Jeong-Jeong and Master Piandao, who was the best swordsman in the whole world, were seated by an open window, bent over piles of correspondence. All three looked up from their conversation when Zuko entered, and Jeong-Jeong and Piandao rose and bowed to him, because he was the Crown Prince, and they owed him respect.</p><p>He bent himself to Iroh, kneeling on the warm flagstones of the hall.</p><p>“Prince Zuko,” Iroh said. “This is a surprise. What may I do for you?” His uncle did not sound annoyed, but he did sound busy. Ozai had long ago taught Zuko the value of making his requests swift.</p><p>“Fire Lord,” he said, keeping his head bent, his eyes fixed on the floor. “I just now finished reading the scrolls and the Historian said he was going to burn them and I told him I wanted to say something to you first.”</p><p>“Go on, Prince Zuko,” Iroh said, and he smiled encouragingly. The Fire Lord wasn’t supposed to show emotion, he was supposed to be pitiless as fire, but Zuko was glad his uncle wasn’t always severe, because it helped him find his words.</p><p>“It wouldn’t be honorable for you to grant amisty for the soldiers who did those things in those scrolls, because they did evil and wrong and dishonorable deeds, so I think you should not burn the scrolls and you should put them in prison instead, please.”</p><p>“It’s pronounced amnesty, Prince Zuko. Muh, nuh, amnesty.” Out of all the reactions Zuko had imagined, he hadn’t dreamed that his pronunciation would be corrected. He flushed and tried not to be embarrassed that Master Piandao, who was the very best swordsman probably ever, had seen the Fire Lord rebuke him.</p><p>“Amnesty,” he repeated, sullenly, and then, because he knew better than to be obstinate, “Fire Lord.”</p><p>“I appreciate your suggestion, Prince Zuko,” Iroh said. “Why don’t you come sit, and we’ll discuss it?”</p><p>“Fire Lord,” Piandao said, his voice low. “Surely you did not have the Crown Prince read the Enumerated Grievances?”</p><p>“Perhaps had Ozai read them he would have been less bellicose,” Jeong-Jeong said. A servant brought another chair for Zuko, and he was seated between his uncle and Master Piandao. The swordsman actually smiled at him when he sat upright, and he had to bite his tongue to refrain from asking about his victory at Sybil River.</p><p>“Have you read the scrolls, all of them, and memorized those passages which you were assigned?”</p><p>“Yes, Fire Lord.”</p><p>“And what did you think?” Iroh asks. “When you become Fire Lord, will you be proud to stand at the culmination of that history?”</p><p>Zuko hated when his uncle asked him questions like that, because you weren’t supposed to think poorly of the Fire Nation, and you certainly weren’t supposed to speak such things to the Fire Lord.</p><p>“No, Fire Lord,” he said. Zuko could feel Jeong-Jeong and Piandao watching him, and he tried not to wilt under their scrutiny. (He wondered vaguely if Piandao would sign the wanted poster that he had stolen from the market, back before Iroh had pardoned the swordsman for deserting.)</p><p>“I’m not proud of it either,” Iroh said. “General Jeong-Jeong, do you find yourself in awe of the Fire Nation’s honorable actions?”</p><p>“I do not, Fire Lord,” Jeong-Jeong said. “I spent many years of my life bringing complaints of inhumanity before Fire Lord Azulon’s ministers, and all my reports were ignored.”</p><p>“And you, Master Piandao?” Iroh asked, “What do you think of the Fire Nation’s actions?”</p><p>“I broke my oath rather than serve under generals who embraced barbarism instead of honor, Fire Lord.”</p><p>“And then Grandfather sent one hundred soldiers to arrest you in Shu Jing!” Zuko burst out. “But you defeated the entire army, but you didn’t even kill one of them, and then-”</p><p>“It’s rude to interrupt your elders, Prince Zuko,” Iroh said, but his voice wasn’t harsh. “You see, Prince Zuko, the Fire Nation’s actions are a reflection of the character of both the Nation and the Fire Lord. General Jeong-Jeong and Master Piandao both refused to countenance the evils that they witnessed, and I likewise have instituted my New Peace in an attempt to right past wrongs.”</p><p>“But then how come-”</p><p>“Please refrain from vulgar speech patterns, Prince Zuko.”</p><p>“Sorry. Um. Forgive me, Fire Lord. Why are we burning the scrolls if we have them and know who did all the bad things?”</p><p>“A good and useful question, Crown Prince.” Iroh said, and he smiled again. “Perhaps Master Piandao can help you work through your answer.” Piandao dipped his head, and turned to Zuko, his gaze open and appraising.</p><p>“The Fire Lord is the fulcrum on which the Fire Nation hinges, Prince Zuko,” Piandao said. “He is the wheel’s center, around whom all the spokes of power turn. He maintains balance through one of two methods. The first is force, and this method the Fire Lords Sozin and Azulon and Ozai practiced. The Fire Lord who depends on force must execute his will through severity; he cannot afford mercy without appearing weak, and he cannot appear weak without threatening his security. The second method is mediation, which Fire Lord Iroh has chosen. The Fire Lord who maintains balance through mediation wins the goodwill of his people by providing for them, and he maintains his power through their favor. He does not have to behave as a tyrant, because his people obey him willingly, knowing that he has their best interests at heart, just as father does for his children.”</p><p>Zuko rubbed his scar self-consciously, the skin pink and tight and peeling.</p><p>“The scrolls detail the misdeeds of thousands of soldiers, actions which were and are morally reprehensible, which soldiers knew violated our ethical codes. However, Prince Zuko, imagine what would happen if your uncle were to demand that every soldier named in the scrolls should face justice. Whole military companies are often implicated in misdeeds.” Piandao paused, and Zuko knew it was expected that he speak.</p><p>“The soldiers would have to arrest each other,” he said, slowly, and the three men nodded. “And they might not want to arrest each other.”</p><p>“And what happens when soldiers are forced by the Fire Lord to do what they do not want to do?”</p><p>“They won’t favor him,” Zuko said. “And he’ll have to use force.”</p><p>“And how effective is use of force likely to be? What are the ramifications of using one half of the army to arrest the other?”</p><p>“They would fight?”</p><p>“Don’t ask questions when you answer them, Prince Zuko,” Iroh said, but he did not sound angry.</p><p>“They would fight.” He said, more firmly.</p><p>“Yes,” Piandao said. “The fragile peace would splinter, and the country would yield itself to violence once more. Fire Lord Iroh’s Beneficent Concessions are designed to earn him favor and loyalty, from both the people and the military. By burning the records of the soldiers, he is symbolically burning all past grievances, and opening the door to the New Peace.”</p><p>Zuko sat and thought, and he was not interrupted. The men looked at him, and he did not allow himself to squirm in his seat.</p><p>“It still seems wrong,” he said, when he could think of no other objection.</p><p>“Sometimes, Prince Zuko,” Iroh said. “Doing what is honorable will do more harm than doing what is right. Thank you for coming to talk to me, and for taking an interest in the records. Your desire for justice will serve you well in the future.” Zuko rose and bowed, because he knew when he had been dismissed. Master Piandao and General Jeong-Jeong bowed to him in turn.</p><p>“Oh, Prince Zuko?” Master Piandao said. “Fire Lord Iroh told me you have expressed consistent interest in learning how to fight with bladed weapons. It is not my custom to accept apprentices, but I maintain an open mind. Meet me in the weapons courtyard tomorrow at dawn, and I will observe your potential and render my opinion.”</p><p>Zuko had bowed to him, deeply, and had then gone running through the hallways to tell Azula that he had actually met Piandao, and that the swordsman actually wanted to train him.</p><p>______________________________</p><p>“It’s too cold up here,” Katara says, her face red and wind-chapped already, her fingers frozen in his hands. “Come on, let’s go somewhere warmer.”</p><p>“Oh,” he says, understanding, and he feels himself redden. “Alright.” So they pull on their gloves, and he draws the fur hood over his head, and beneath the glimmering waves of fire that flare and subside like the tides, like his breath, high above their heads, they hurry down the glacier, into the dark of the long night.</p><p>In the city it’s snowing harder, and music breaks out in bursts from every corner. His heart hammers like the staccato drums he hears in every glacierstone hall, he draws his breath in in time to the flautists’ exhalations, his feet, sure in his fur-lined boots, carry him across the accumulated ice and snow to the melody of raised voices.</p><p>It’s so different from the Fire Nation’s solstice festival, which is a spirit day, marked by mourning.</p><p>It’s sacrilege to even consider conceiving a child under the failed sun. How much worse it must have been for his father to have his firstborn heir come blue-faced and not breathing into the world on the one day of the year when the sun was weakest.</p><p>The memory of Katara's lips, sweet and hot and trembling against his own spurs him to match her pace. </p><p>She does not lead him to Hakoda’s igloo. Instead, she draws him down to the drydock, where the stretched-skin canoes lie insulated by thirty feet of earth, designed to prevent their hard shells from cracking in the ill weather. Hakoda had earlier shown him how to oil the pelts with blackfish fat to keep them supple and waterproof. Now, Katara draws him past their slumbering frames, down into a room that must at some point have housed supplies, but which is empty except for a couple of sconces on the wall. He lights them with a breath.</p><p>“It used to be a safe room,” she explains. “Fire Nation raids were rare in winter, but they happened. As children we used to huddle here while the men went out to fight. There’s nothing flammable, so they couldn’t burn us out.” She speaks so calmly of her horrors. He draws back from her, guilt welling in his stomach beneath the weight of her words.</p><p>“Katara,” he says. “How can you want this?”</p><p>“Zuko,” she says. “You’re not a colonizer. You’re nothing like the soldiers who came and tried to stamp us out.”</p><p>“But I am them,” he says. “What they did, they did in my name.”</p><p>“Zuko,” she says, so, so softly. “I thought you would hate it here. I thought you’d hate the food and resent having to work and I thought you’d be offended by my tribe’s customs. But you aren't, you’ve done so much, you’re always so willing to help, you’re the first outsider to ever sing a paddle-song, did you know that? We’ve had marriages with Earth Kingdom merchants before, men who spend their lives on the sea, who have their own music, and none of them has ever managed more than a verse or two before they lose focus. And you sang the song, and then you felt the waves and the waves sang through you. That doesn’t happen, Zuko, not for outsiders, not even for most tribesmen.”</p><p>“But everything is because you taught me,” he protests.</p><p>“What you did I could not teach you, Zuko,” she says. “I’ve sung the paddle-songs a thousand times, and I’ve never felt the ocean lift my voice within me. You’re not Fire Nation, or if you are, you’re not like the men who came to raid us.” She shucks off her coat, and spreads it on the hard-packed floor. “You could belong here,” she says. “You said once you didn’t want to be the Crown Prince, so don’t. Be my father’s son, be my husband, be one of us. Any of the aoidoi would take you on as an apprentice, old Qulanar of the Eastern Glacier Tribe overheard you singing the Blackfish Asma, and he asked my father if you’d be staying. Zuko, Qulanar hasn’t taken an apprentice in decades, he once tore a Fire Nation soldier’s head off with his bare hands, and even he can see that you belong here.”</p><p>Her words are overwhelming. His heart is stuttering in his chest, his stomach is on fire, she’s got him all tangled up in lust and love and warmth and he knows if he speaks he’s going to tell her that what she’s offering is all he’s ever wanted, that he’s never dreamed of being the Crown Prince, that if he could spend the rest of his life singing old songs and kissing her, he would be the happiest man who ever lived.</p><p>He has a duty. He cannot deny his birthright, any more than he can deny the scar on his face. He is Sozin’s son, and his people must always be his concern.</p><p>So he draws her to him instead, and he kisses her. She twines her arms around his neck, her movements certain, her arms as dark as fertile farmland, and her mouth opens to his, like an orchard flowering beneath the sun. Her lips are sweeter than desert dates; she sighs into his touch, and the sound she makes is like the wind rustling through cultivated wildflowers. He can still taste the winter wine on her tongue, and he presses her to him, and she draws closer still, twining her body to his like wisteria around an oak.</p><p>Her fingers find the laces of his coat, and he helps her to undo them, although his hands shake. Although it is the dead of winter, his stomach floods with fire, her hands push his coat from his shoulders, and then she reaches up, and touches his scar.</p><p>Involuntarily, he freezes. Her caress is gentle, her touch kind. Her fingers trace the outline of his father’s palm, now eleven years old, as old as he was when he got it. She touches the hairless ridge of his forehead where his eyebrow should be, she smooths his long hair behind his mangled ear, she touches the ruined skin of his neck, and she says nothing, only watches him with eyes bluer than any mountain lake, and deeper than any river.</p><p>“Does it- if it bothers you-” he starts, and she plants a kiss where healthy skin meets burned, and another on his cheek, and another on his eye.</p><p>“Don’t ever think that,” she says, her voice softer than spring rain on a ploughed field. “I couldn’t bear it for you to think that.”</p><p>Her words melt the ice in his veins. He becomes water, she sinks onto their piled coats and he is drawn down after her. Her hair is long and loose, he draws his fingers through it, and she shivers when he grazes her scalp. She undoes the slender twist of leather that he uses to form a topknot as best he can, and his own hair falls into his eyes.</p><p>It’s grown a lot since he last had it cut. The palace barbers will probably- (the palace barbers are dead or captured; they will never cut it again.)</p><p>She brushes her fingers through his hair, her nails scratch his scalp, and he leans into her touch, his spine tingling, his stomach suddenly studded with pinprick chills from her touch. He cups her chin tenderly, and her gaze meets his, sapphire and glimmering and fierce. He touches his lips to her neck, and she digs her fingers into the ruff of her abandoned coat; he kisses the soft skin where chin meets neck, and he feels a shudder shiver through her body. He tastes her pulse-point and she gasps; he pulls back, alarmed at her reaction, but she twines her fingers in his hair and draws him down to her again.</p><p>“Don’t stop,” she commands, breathless, and then she adds, “Please.” So he kisses her again, and her sighs rise around him like mist in the mountains at dawn.</p><p>She pushes him away, and he sits back on his heels, looking at her in the faint torchlight, the fire’s shadows dancing across her face.</p><p>“I’ve done this before, just so you know,” she says.</p><p>“I’ve kissed people too,” he says, and she shakes her head.</p><p>“I meant sex.” Oh. <em>Oh</em>. </p><p>“Is that what we’re doing?” He asks, and he knows even as he speaks that if his teeth were sentient they’d clamp shut on the question and refuse to let it out his mouth because of how idiotic it sounds.</p><p>“Unless you don’t want to,” she says, and he can’t tell whether she’s teasing him or being coy. He decides it’s safest to bet it’s both.</p><p>“I, um, haven’t. I mean obviously I’ve done some things, I’m not some kind of moralist or monk or anything, but I haven’t ever done much more than, well, touch.”</p><p>“Don’t feel pressured,” she says with a sweet half smile, like a crescent moon rising above a field of wheat, and she kisses him, and she draws his hand up to her robe’s complicated laces, and she allows him to loosen them, little by little.</p><p>Her body reveals itself to him like moonlight creeping gradually over stone. He kisses the bronze skin of her chest; he marvels at the way she flushes red beneath his touch, she strips him of his own fur-lined clothes, and where her fingers brush his bared skin, little fires follow. The flat planes of her stomach are swallowed by the curve of her hips; he presses a kiss to her thighs and she guides him gently, almost hesitantly, to where she wants him to lick.</p><p>She jolts upright when he does, and his uncle’s hair-tearingly awkward conversation about the importance of consideration and gentleness and the necessity of adequate preparation before copulation flies straight out of his head, because the way her breath comes in little gasps and the way she tenses beneath his touch is incentive enough for him to never stop.</p><p>She sighs his name.</p><p>How he feels… he’ll have to store up the way his heart seems suddenly a vessel, and the way her name on his lips makes it overflow.</p><p>Her thighs tremble beneath his touch, and she clenches her fingers around his hand and her back arches off the pile of furs, her mouth rounded, her eyes glazed.</p><p>He’s read a thousand poems about love, but none of them prepare him for the way his heart swells up like a sponge left in the rain, the way warmth spreads through him when she draws his mouth to hers, the way he shivers when she kisses him.</p><p>She wraps her hips around his own, and murmurs, “Please, Zuko.”</p><p>It’s awkward and embarrassing when he slips out of her the first time, and the second, but they manage it the third, and when he finishes not even a minute later, she doesn’t laugh at him or make jokes, even though he knows it’s supposed to last longer. She only lays her head against his chest and shuts her eyes.</p><p>“You’re so warm,” she murmurs. “I never want to move again.”</p><p>He raises his temperature by a degree or two, and she sighs contentedly.</p><p>“That’s so nice,” she says. “You’re like summer even in winter.”</p><p>He doesn’t mean to fall asleep. He means to memorize the curves of her body, the way her chest rises when she breathes, the way her lips part slightly and the way her eyes flutter behind closed lids. But he drifts off shortly after she does.</p><p>He dreams of summer rain and a hearth fire, and when he wakes up, he is smiling.</p><p>______________________________</p><p>They mean to make their way back to the city, but are pulled together by the warmth of their tangled limbs, and by the time they pull apart and finally dress in last night’s clothes, it’s so far past dawn (or what passes for dawn, without the sun to keep time) that even tribesmen nursing hangovers must be awake, although the streets are noticeably more empty than normal.</p><p>Hakoda is carving a boomerang when they enter the igloo, and he very pointedly does not ask any questions about their conspicuous absence.</p><p>Instead, he asks if Zuko would be willing to carve a flute for Orlak’s boy, since the old fisherman is missing his right hand, and struggles with woodwork.</p><p>The warm glowing feeling in Zuko’s stomach only strengthens, and he sits beside Hakoda and finds joy in his labor. The chieftain asks him to sing something, so he does, the first song that comes to mind.</p><p>It’s the tragedy of San Lee, and Orahama, and Na Jan. Now that he knows what it is to love, the story is more achingly terrible, and his voice falters when he tells of Orahama struck down between the feuding brothers’ blows.</p><p>“The world’s full of tales like that,” Hakoda says when he finishes, and Zuko sighs. “Sometimes love is letting something go, but sometimes love is cleaving together and refusing to be separated.” The man’s words are pensive, his tone considering. </p><p>They eat dinner in the long winter dark, and Katara presses close to him, drawing warmth from his body. At the gathering that night in the glacierstone hall, little Piqua takes her first steps between his and Katara’s outstretched arms.</p><p>Peace happens like that, sometimes. For a few earth-shattering moments the whole world stills, like the air hangs heavy before a thundercrack, and ease and comfort and happiness fill action’s absence.</p><p>Hakoda makes some excuse about spending the night with Bato, and Kanna chooses to sleep with the newborn and his mother, still weak from giving birth when Zuko was ill.</p><p>Their touches are surer, the third time, their movements gentle. In their shared bedroll by the fire, they taste bliss.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0016"><h2>16. Do Not Forget</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>An updated and revamped version of ASOT, beginning with Chapter 16 (formerly The Indifferent Children of the Earth, now Do Not Forget)</p>
          </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Dear Friends,</p><p>You may have noticed that this story has gone from being completed to having 19 chapters remaining, and you may (equally) have noticed that I’ve deleted 5 chapters. This is because, after much thought and consideration, I’ve determined that I’m unhappy with how I chose to end ASOT the first time, and because there are no rules, I’ve decided to fix everything. I did preserve a copy of the original, so if for some reason you want it, I’ll be happy to send it to you (my contact info is in my bio). </p><p>The most important thing for you to know going forward is that there is no Avatar anymore. I’ve made minor, mostly cosmetic changes to the story, and may continue to tweak little things here and there, but the main thrust of what’s different going forward is that Aang remains, sadly, gone. Also, the council scene, where Hakoda and the old men discuss Aang’s return and Kuei’s intention to marry Azula, has been removed. The subsequent conversation about Zuko’s sexuality has shifted to later in this work as a result. Please also be aware that the ending of this story will diverge from how it originally ended, and this version will be somewhat darker than the original. I don’t foresee needing to add additional warnings, but watch the tags, just in case. </p><p>The new parts of chapter 16 begin with the asterisks. </p><p>Let me know your thoughts, comments, and concerns, and rest assured that I don’t plan on making a habit of this. If anything, I’ve learned my lesson about hastiness. Also, since I have school and a thesis to finish, not to mention work &amp;c, I’ll be updating more slowly than I was, but again, I was racing last time and was scared to commit to a 110-130K fic (which I imagine is how long this is going to end up being, sorry), so I rushed a bit and flubbed the ending. So, yeah. Thanks everyone for telling me you loved this story initially, flawed as it was (believe me, it will remain flawed, but hopefully slightly less so), and for inspiring me to do better.</p><p>Love you. </p><p>❤️ ~ecphasis~ ❤️</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>“What’s wrong?” Zuko asks. Katara’s sigh prickles against his skin, and he shivers from the gooseflesh that arises where her breath brushes over him. Her body is pleasantly wedged against his own. His heart is still hammering, his skin is pleasantly warm, and Katara’s head is nestled in his neck. He can feel the tension in her muscles, and for the fourth time in as many minutes, she readjusts herself, drawing her hand over his chest. She is restless, incapable of getting comfortable.</p><p>“It’s that obvious?” she asks, with a half-laugh that sounds very far removed from humor. He frowns into her hair, and pulls her closer, and she shifts so she is propped on her elbow.</p><p>“Just a little.”</p><p>“It’s nothing.” Her voice is soft, and she will not meet his eyes. Her fingers trace spirals on his bare chest, and he breathes, steadily. She shuts her eyes and flattens herself against him, the way a sparrowkeet flattens its feathers to hide in a crevice when a hawk passes overhead. He waits. She kisses his shoulder, her lips cool, her touch distracting, and she murmurs her words into the crook of his neck. “I can’t stop thinking about Hama.”</p><p>“Oh Katara,” he says.</p><p>“I told my father about her, and he and the elders absolved me of blood-guilt, they cut open an otter penguin and scattered its innards on white snow, and had me spend a night on the ice, and they lifted the curse, but I killed her, and I can’t stop thinking that if I’d done something else, if I’d been less hasty, less violent, I could’ve saved her. She could’ve come home. And I tried to find her kin, I asked Gran-Gran and she said she thought Hama had a cousin in the Shallow Sea Tribe, so I went to their elder and asked after the cousin, but the old man had never even heard of Hama, and didn’t know anything, so I tried their sister kin-groups, and then I asked in every tribe, but no one remembers her, except for my Gran-Gran.”</p><p>“You remember her,” he tells her. “You learned from her, you can teach Laluk bloodbending, and he can teach his students someday, and they’ll teach theirs, and in that way you’ll be certain that she is remembered.”</p><p>“But I murdered her, Zuko! I seized up every twisting vein in her body and she died fighting her own flesh. And I know she would have killed you, but that doesn’t mean she deserved to died! All those years she spent in the Fire Nation, she thought our people were dead. She thought she was the last one left. Her murderer can’t be the only one to remember her.” He smoothes her hair away from her face, and he looks at her.</p><p>“My people write laments,” he says. “We sing about the fallen as a way of freeing their spirits. I know I’m not her kin, and that my people were the cause of all her suffering, but if you want I could write one for her.”</p><p>“You’d do that?” She asks, and he nods.</p><p>“I’m not anything like the Court Poets, so it wouldn’t be what she deserves, but I know the forms well enough.”</p><p>“That would be- I think it would help, to know I’m not the only one who thinks of her.”</p><p>“Alright,” he says. He kisses her, just above her hairline, and she settles with her head on his chest. He breathes slowly, and she breathes with him, and he imagines, treacherously, dangerously, unwisely, how he would need to teach her to breathe from her stomach, if she were to conceive a firebender.</p><p>This is not permanent. He must go to the Fire Nation, once the worst of the winter breaks, and travel becomes possible. She is needed here; she needs her people. He cannot ask her to leave behind her father and her grandmother and the clinging children and little Laluk, who is working diligently on mastering the first three novice forms, and who has learned to move his body like the tides.</p><p>Perhaps in another life, in a world where Sozin never overstepped, in a version of the South Pole where every kin-group had benders, and the peoples of the world lived in peace and friendship, he could ask her to abandon her heritage and embrace his. As the world stands, as his people have made it, he cannot.</p><p>He considers the necklace strung around her neck. Perhaps he can give her something to remember him by. </p><p><br/>______________________________</p><p>“Chieftain Hakoda?” Zuko asks. Katara’s father looks up from his labor, which appears to involve a pile of little animal hides, perhaps marmoset marmots. He lifts the corners of his eyes in something that Zuko has come to realize is a smile.</p><p>“Zuko,” he says, and his voice is warm. “Come in. How was sparring with Katara?” Zuko enters the strange, smoky hut and his nostrils are assaulted with the stench of lye and meat and steam rising off a vat of bubbling grey liquid that Zuko would prefer not to interrogate. He wrinkles his nose, and stands beside Hakoda, who slows his gestures down to a fraction of what they were before Zuko announced himself.</p><p>He draws an iron scraper, about as long as Zuko’s arm, and evidently very sharp, down over the hide stretched before him, and he catches up gristle and innards and blood bits, and he deftly flicks them away. </p><p>“It’s still easier to spar with my dao swords than with firebending,” he admits. “I don’t know why; with the sun back, I should be capable of more than what I am.”</p><p>“I’m certain that as spring comes your strength will return,” Hakoda says. Once again, he moves his scraper down the hide, his movements short and sharp. The hide shifts minutely under his touch, and Zuko knows that the ease of the chieftain’s movements belies his skill.</p><p>“Can I help?” He asks, and Hakoda’s eyes crinkle further.</p><p>“I’d welcome it. Here, take this scraper, and I’ll show you. You’ll want to move in small increments, try to cover an area about the width of your finger. The hide is tough; it’ll be harder than you expect.” Zuko tries to mimic Hakoda’s movements, but the hide rucks up beneath the blade, and he doesn’t manage to actually remove any of the flesh. He tries again, and Hakoda nods. “You’ll find a rhythm if you work at it long enough.” He slips another pelt out of the bubbling grey solution, and he lays it over a rounded stone, and he resumes his movements, still working slowly enough for Zuko to watch and mimic.</p><p>He scrapes as Hakoda does, and gradually a small area on the hide grows white, and he shifts the disgusting bloody thing over and starts anew.</p><p>“I assume you’ve never field-stripped a carcass?” The chieftain asks.</p><p>“I’ve seen it done,” Zuko says. “My father used to go hunting occasionally, and he took me, but the royal family is not supposed to touch corpses.”</p><p>“It’s important, if you want the pelt, to skin the animal as soon as you kill it. The longer you wait, the harder it will be to get a clean cut, but if the blood is still warm, the skin peels right off in your hands.”</p><p>“What’s in the vat?” </p><p>“An emulsion of brains and brine and water. It prepares the skin for tanning, renders it soft and usable.” Zuko cannot help his grimace, and Hakoda’s lips quirk upwards. “It’s no Fire Nation palace, I grant you.”</p><p>“It seems more honest for a ruler to live with his people,” Zuko says. “My training as a Crown Prince was supposed to teach me compassion for my people, but I never did anything like this. All my tasks were ritual, they weren’t actually useful to anybody. And you know all the people in your tribe, and you hold their children, and you aren’t avaricious or vicious or mad, you love them. I was told a ruler is the father to his people, but you aren’t a father so much as their representative. You’re less their head, and more their tongue.”</p><p>“Yes,” Hakoda says, simply.</p><p>“But doesn’t it breed dissent? I was always taught that people were fractious, that the Fire Lord was needed to maintain balance.”</p><p>“Oh, we fight amongst ourselves, certainly. But every chieftain wants the best for his tribe, and every tribe wants the best for their clan, and every clan wants the best for the pole, and thus, working together, we find solutions. And we have our elders to guide us, if we are unsure of our decisions. They prevent us from being hasty and unwise.”</p><p>Zuko scrapes his hide until he has a white patch as long as his arm, mulling Hakoda’s words over in his mind.</p><p>“Do you think-” he starts. “Do you think it could work like that elsewhere?”</p><p>“I think it could,” Hakoda says. “If people are willing to lay aside grudges and quarrels, and if the young are willing to listen to the old, and if the powerful are willing to surrender their power.” Hakoda has already stripped his hide, although it is roughly the size of Zuko’s, and he stretches it out to dry, and begins working on another. “It wasn’t always like that for us,” he says. “We chose to choose our leaders. We rejected the old ice kings in the north. That’s why we came here in the first place.” </p><p>Zuko ponders this, and as he ponders, he scrapes, and by the time Hakoda is halfway through his fifth hide, Zuko’s first is white and gleaming. The chieftain nods approvingly, and Zuko takes another, and tries not to question whether the scent of the brain soup will ever wash out of his fingers.</p><p>He wonders, not for the first time, what it must have been like to grow up with a father so quick to pile praise up on his children. He has never heard Hakoda say a sharp word to his daughter, let alone raise his hand in anger. When Zuko has children, he will-</p><p>but no. He may have the joy of holding Katara in his arms, but there is a gulf between sex and parenthood that he cannot ask her to bridge. </p><p>Hakoda’s face is twisted in concentration when he next speaks. “There’s an old tradition, you know, Zuko, that when a man’s wife first conceives, he will see an animal in his dreams. He must hunt it down and make a parka from its skin for his wife to wear, and if he does so, the baby will be born fat and healthy.”</p><p>Zuko’s face flushes; his whole body flushes, he has to release his grip on the pelt or else risk singing it with his scorching palms. Hakoda is not looking at him, he is steadfastly working away at his hide.</p><p>“Um,” he says, because what else is he supposed to say?</p><p>“Just so you know,” Hakoda says, and he picks up his seventh pelt. </p><p>“Thanks,” Zuko mutters, and tries very hard not to set fire to his pile of brain-brine soaked skins.</p><p>______________________________</p><p>The sun slips higher into the sky every day, and although its rays are powerless to penetrate the frigid antarctic chill, the additional few minutes that it spends in the heavens every time it rises warms his body. Hakoda celebrates Katara’s birthday with sweetcakes made from stockpiled sugar, and he gives her a whispered blessing that leaves her half in tears.</p><p>The sugar is luscious on Zuko’s tongue, now long used to the meat and sea-brine that compose almost every meal in the south. </p><p>That evening, Laluk shows him how he is capable of causing ripples in a bucket of still water, and Tita and Katu demand that he braid their hair, a task which he fails at miserably. </p><p>“Silly boys,” Katara says, when they complain. “He’s given you a Fire Nation style, you should be grateful.”</p><p>“I’m a firebender!” Tita proclaims, and Katu shoves him.</p><p>“Am not! I am!” And this leads to a scuffle on the floor, which Zuko chooses not to involve himself in. They’re just playing, after all.</p><p>Their younger sister sits in his lap, sucking her thumb, watching them with round blue eyes. </p><p>Katara leads her shoulder against his, and he’s surprised when a newborn is pressed into her arms by a woman who ducks her head and does not meet his eyes. The toddlers tend to be passed around, but mothers prefer to hold their nursing babies, he has learned.</p><p>Katara flushes, but she cradles the infant to her chest. It wriggles in its fur wrappings, and opens its mouth in a yawn. Her delicate fingers trace the baby’s cheeks, and his heartstrings loosen when the baby reaches up to touch Katara’s face.</p><p>“It’s said that holding a nursing baby will help a woman get pregnant,” she explains, when she catches his curious gaze. </p><p>“Oh,” he says, and he looks down to avoid looking at her.</p><p>She would be a good mother. She is so patient with the boys who pull at her skirts to get her attention, and the girls who demand that she make shapes out of the water. If they were to have a child-</p><p>He wants a child. It’s strange to want things, he had never wanted for anything before he married her, but then again, he had never had anything he truly wanted, except for sword fighting lessons. Even if he can’t have what he wants, it’s somehow freeing to feel desire.</p><p>______________________________</p><p>After the gathering, she draws him down to the drydocks, and his stomach flutters in anticipation of her tender kisses, and the way her body arches when he touches her, but when he reaches for her dress, she stops him with a touch.</p><p>“Zuko,” she says. The full vessel of his heart spills over, slightly, when she says his name. “You do want children, don’t you? You said you did.”</p><p>“Someday,” he says, which is the safest, truest answer. Before he has time to question her, she draws him down on top of her, and he resolves to stop thinking.</p><p>______________________________</p><p>The next morning, Hakoda asks him if he would be willing to transcribe an old tribal song currently maintained by only one aoidos in the entire pole, Qulanar of the Eastern Glacier Tribe, and he agrees.</p><p>He has no experience taking dictation, and the song is heavily alliterative, the elder’s voice is weak from old age, and he writes in small characters to preserve paper, so by the time he finally accomplishes the task, it’s been recited to him at least a dozen times, and it’s firmly lodged in his head. </p><p>The aoidos asks him to return the next day to record a mourning-song he composed for his wife, and when he asks Hakoda, the chieftain grants his permission.</p><p>His days pass pleasantly. He rises early and works through his firebending forms, although his fire will not come, he aids Hakoda in whatever work the chieftain is doing, he eats a hearty breakfast of meat and seaweed and oysters, spiceless but filling, and he sits before the half-blind old singer and takes down his words on paper.</p><p>The man asks him to sing the songs back to him, and Zuko does so, hesitantly. He doesn’t have a fine voice like the singers in the Fire Nation, but he finds that the technical skills of singing are not half so prized as an intuitive response to meter in the Southern Water Tribe, and that while he may lack the former, he has a good grasp of the latter. Old Qulanar shows him rote substitutions for certain phrases, and has him sing long minutes in anapestic trimeter, or spondaic dimeter catalectic, or dactylic hexameter, relying on these rote memorizations alone.</p><p>Zuko knows the names for the meters that Qulanar has him manipulate. The old man is not half so technical in his assessments, but his knowledge of poetry is wide-ranging, and he can compose a verse about anything, in any meter, on the fly. It's a joy to sing with him, or to listen to him.</p><p>Zuko spends his evenings in the communal hall, holding children and listening to stories, seated with Katara beside him.</p><p>His nights he spends with Katara, knitting their bodies closer and closer together, laughing and kissing and telling tall tales and searching out pleasure from flushed skin and clever fingers.</p><p>He’s never been happy before. </p><p>***********************************</p><p>“Hakoda?” Zuko questions, hesitantly. Katara’s father looks up from his place before the fire, where he always sits during the evening gatherings, observing the tribe with misted eyes.</p><p>“Zuko,” he says, and his words are smile-tinged. Good-naturedly, he holds out his flask of grain alcohol, and Zuko sips. The sting of it draws tears to his eyes, as always. “No children tonight?”</p><p>“I had to wriggle out from under a pile of them,” Zuko says, and Hakoda laughs.</p><p>“They have taken to you. If I’d have known of the value you Fire Nationals offer, I would have kept more prisoners.” Zuko feels his blood chill. He knows intellectually, of course, that Hakoda has killed his people in the past, but he cannot imagine the gentle chieftain as a savage, face-painted, wolf-tailed warrior. To hear him speak of what he did so casually casts a black pall over them both. “Sorry,” Hakoda murmurs, after a moment of stunned silence. “Perhaps I’ve had more to drink than I thought.”</p><p>“It was war,” Zuko says, diplomatically. “And we were the aggressors.”</p><p>“There’s only so much agressing a seventeen year old who’s pissed himself can do,” Hakoda says, and Zuko realizes that he does not want to know. He does not want to imagine Hakoda’s hands red with his kin-blood. He does not want to think about life during the war. He does not want to think of Katara’s father as an enemy. “I’m sorry,” Hakoda says again. He draws a long draught of his grain alcohol, and he does not so much as flinch at the taste. “The elders say winter is for remembering, but I often find I’d rather forget. What can I do for you, Zuko?”</p><p>“The necklace Katara wears, her mother’s,” Zuko starts. “I was thinking. I know we are already wed, but I would like to make her one. Not as a replacement, of course, but just to have, so she knows, so everyone knows, not that I want to possess her, but I thought she might like- It’s just I want her to know she is my wife, not that I think she doesn’t, but I just like her, and-”</p><p>“Zuko,” Hakoda says, dryly. “Believe me, I know. I think Katara would appreciate the gesture. A boy of the tribe would know the symbolisms of wood and stone and ivory and would choose accordingly, but tell me what form you’d like the necklace to take first.”</p><p>“Um,” Zuko says. “I thought ivory initially, because it is the most costly, but Katara is not ivory. But then I thought maybe a disk of juniper wood, perhaps driftwood that’s been weathered by the sea.” Hakoda peers up at him from vibrant blue eyes, Katara’s eyes, and Zuko holds himself steady beneath the man’s gaze.</p><p>“Juniper’s a judicious choice,” he says, at length. “It’s the symbol of rebirth. I will help you when you have thought of the symbol you will carve into it.”</p><p>“Thank you,” Zuko says, and ducks his head.</p><p>Katara is where he left her, chatting with Bato, a newborn baby in her arms, and a toddler curled against her side.</p><p>“Your spiritual partner has returned, Kiddo,” Bato remarks, but there is no rancour in his words. </p><p>“Shut up Bato!” She exclaims, and the child stirs fitfully in her arms. </p><p>“How is the venerable chieftain, O chaste one?” Bato inquires. Zuko feels a flush flare across face. Still, there’s an edge to his words that Zuko cannot help noticing, and he does not know what response is required of him.</p><p>“He seems well,” he says, cautiously.</p><p>“I will give him my regards,” Bato says, and Katara nods. Zuko settles beside her, and she offers him the baby. He holds the child tenderly against his chest, and feels it settle deeper into sleep. His smile is instinctive. Katara leans against him, and he shifts so she can more comfortably lean against his side.</p><p>She gives a shuddering sigh, and he glances at her, but she smiles at him the way the sun smiles on sprouted wheat in June.</p><p>The winter is only half over. He still has time, time with her, time to memorize the way the torchlight spills across her face and breaks to shadow.</p><p>An aoidos visiting from another tribe begins to sing the Blackfish Asma, and Zuko feels the meter in his heart. (Katara’s tribe has no aoidos of their own, they have no elder who has stored up their people’s stories in his mind. They need a songweaver who will not forget, a man who has been educated almost from birth in the way poems slip like liquid over the tongue.)</p><p>“It’s good your father has a friend so generous as Bato,” he says, simply for the joy of saying something to her. She glances at him with an almost bemused expression.</p><p>“I suppose so,” she says.</p><p>“I think my uncle struggled because when Jeong-Jeong and Piandao were away, he had no one he could rely on.” Katara opens her mouth, and shuts it again, and then she, in the full sight of her whole tribe, presses her lips to his cheek. He flushes crimson beneath her touch.</p><p>“Oh Zuko,” she sighs, and he allows himself to feel the pleasurable prickle of his name in her mouth.</p><p>“What?” He asks. She shakes her head, her eyes alight with silent laughter, and he shifts the child’s weight against his arm.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0017"><h2>17. If thou hast nature in thee, bear it not.</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Katara shakes him awake from a dream about his dead, unburied, and unmourned mother, whose spirit cries out to him from across the sea.</p><p>His wife presses her lips to his, and places her palm over his racing heart.</p><p>Sometimes he cannot quite believe that she would even want to share his pallet, to sleep wrapped in his arms, to be touched by him, and touch him in turn. She wipes away his tears from her cheeks, the brush of her fingers a balm to the burning agony of his mother’s loss.</p><p>He can only see her shadow in the darkness of the igloo; the fire is burned down to embers, and the air is frozen. He can see their breath mingling above them.</p><p>“Bad dreams?” She asks, softly. He traces the contours of her face with his fingers, memorizing the way her breath catches when he comes to her hair.</p><p>“My mother,” he whispers, and she kisses him again. Outside the moon is a waxing gibbous edging towards fullness, and he can hear a blizzard howling in the night. Inside, the igloo is still and silent, except for Katara’s uneven breaths, and his, and Kanna’s whistling snores on the other side of the fire. Hakoda must still be taking council with Bato.</p><p>It’s strange, having what he wants. It’s strange how it is not enough. Holding her in his arms makes him desperate to kiss her, kissing her makes him desperate to make love to her, and when they lie together, legs interlaced, mouths joined, and she fists her hands in her hair and moves contrary to him, he only wants her more. Desire is a horizon that recedes before his approach, the way the grey vista of the oceanic skyline falls back with the world’s curve.</p><p>She kisses him again. The winter wind has chapped her lips and scuffed the smooth skin of her cheeks. Her hair has grown glossy since they returned, and it smells slightly of the fireweed paste she uses to strengthen it. Her mouth moves against his, and he feels his nightmare fading in his memory.</p><p>“I’m cold,” she murmurs, so he shifts so she can lie against his chest and rest her head in the crook of his neck, and he adjusts the furs of their pallet so she is covered.</p><p>“Better?” He asks, a whisper against her hairline. She hums her agreement. He can tell she’s tired; she’s been busy with Bato these past few days, making preparations for something he isn’t quite sure he wants to know about.</p><p>In the depths of winter, in the darkness of the pole, no ships can sail through the storms that ravage the coast. No messenger-birds, not even the wide-winged, high-soaring albatross-eagles, can make it through the black eye of the perpetual brumal hurricane. The outside world has no inroad into the peace of the Southern Water Tribe; no news can reach them, cloistered in their hibernating grounds like a colony of otter-penguins lodging on the cliffside, safe from predators. But sooner or later the storms will break, and the air will clear, and news will come.</p><p>He trails his fingers through Katara’s long hair, and she shifts when he scratches the stubs of his nails against her scalp, the way she likes. By emberlight she is outlined all in gold.</p><p>Of course she is always beautiful. She is beautiful when she bends, all motion and grace, balance and equipoise, masterful in her element. She is lovely when she glances at him from beneath lowered lashes when they side beside each other at dinner, a smile hovering just on the edges of her lips. She is ravishing when she wraps her legs around his waist and cants her hips to draw him deeper into her. She is beguiling when she rocks an infant in her arms, when she bends over a baby and presses her lips to its soft head. But even though he knows this, knows this down to his marrow, he is still rendered breathless by the way her silhouette glimmers in the fading glow of his element, by the way she relaxes so casually in his arms.</p><p>“What?” She asks, her voice the gentle sound of the retreating tide.</p><p>“You’re pretty,” he says, which isn’t what he meant to say at all. His words don’t work for him when he tries to speak to her, because their slippery vibrancy, their sparkling colors, the vocalic assonance, the way the consonants cling to each other, adjective to noun, verb to subject, the way meaning colors meaning, it’s all useless to him, because how could anything adequately express the way he feels when she lets him wrap his arms around her, when she rests her head willingly on his chest, and brushes occasional kisses against his skin?</p><p>“You’re pretty too, Zuko,” she says, but there isn’t any mockery in her voice. She trails her fingers along his scarred cheek, and she presses an open mouthed kiss to his shoulder.</p><p>He wonders what pretty means to her; he wonders whether she too finds words too shallow to express the depths of her emotions.</p><p>He says <em>I love you</em> in the way he draws her tight against his chest, and he hopes that she can hear his confession for what it is.</p><p>__________________________</p><p>The next morning, Katara leaves him to practice her bending with Laluk (he’s still mastering the beginning forms, but Katara says his technique is developing well), and Zuko first sweeps the igloo clean, then polishes the ceremonial silver sword, a gift from King Kuei to Hakoda for his bravery during the war (Zuko wonders if Hakoda knows that accepting a sword is symbolic of accepting a king’s mastery in the Earth Kingdom), then hems Hakoda’s breeches under the close scrutiny of Kanna.</p><p>Before he leaves in search of the chieftain, he warms a stone for her to carry in her muff, to ease the pain in her arthritic fingers.</p><p>Outside, although it is almost midday, the sky is still the rosy pink of dawn, and he makes his way through the snowy streets. It’s cold, but the returning sun warms him despite its elliptical orbit.</p><p>The snow city glimmers in the slanted light, and bundled up in his blue parka, wrapped in furs, he is indistinguishable from a tribesman. The wind bites through even these layers, so he hurries down to the now iced harbor, where Hakoda has asked him to observe how canoes are waterproofed.</p><p>He knows his way around the city now, not as well as he knew Caldera, but well enough for him to never fear getting lost. He watches the blue-swathed tribesmen moving from hut to hut through the half-covered streets, and he wonders if, in time, he will come to recognize them by silhouette alone.</p><p>Katara he could recognize at night, without even the moon to illumine her. He knows her footsteps, the sound of her breath, the way her silences sit on the cold air. He would know her blind, deaf, mute, and senseless. Perhaps someday he will know all her people the same way, and perhaps they will know him.</p><p>The thought warms him more than the nascent sun. (He tries to call a flame to his fingertips, but although he can feel fire sparking in his stomach, what he produces is weak and insubstantial, more enervated than anything he’s made since he was seven years old.)</p><p>Grey clouds swirl in off the southern ocean, and carry heavy snow in their wake. By the time Zuko makes it down to the harbor, he can scarcely see his hand in front of his face, and every inch of his exposed skin stings from the windborne needle-sharp blades of frost that scratch at him.</p><p>Once again, he thinks of Azulon, who poured out an ocean’s worth of blood to possess this place. What good did he think the Southern Pole would do him, or the Fire Nation? Did he expect to keep a garrison of soldiers here year round? Did he want ambergris, or whale-oil, or fine furs? Surely the vast wealth of the Fire Nation was more than sufficient to acquire whatever he desired. What could possibly have drawn him towards war? </p><p>Zuko considers Zhao, avaricious, but by no means stupid. Even his uncle’s strategists had failed to oust him from the rural areas. He was aided, no doubt, by nobles who were less than leal to their lord, but still.</p><p>If he won the war, if he subdued the Fire Nation and had himself crowned Fire Lord, would he turn his gaze south, towards the pole?</p><p>The drydocks are built deep under the permafrost, to keep the ships secure from the worst elements. Hakoda had earlier shown him the great iron winches, well over a century old, Fire Nation forged, that they used every spring to haul the ships up to the sea. They are among the most well tended possessions of the Water Tribe, since without them, the fleet would have to be buried the ancient way, in sod and skin and moss and snow, which damages the seaworthiness of even a pitch-painted hull.</p><p>Zuko enjoys this knowledge, revels in the way his mind catalogues the many intricacies of the tribe’s culture. Much is still mysterious to him, but much has been made clear, and he-</p><p>He pauses. He hears lowered voices coming from further into the hut, and he stills his movements. Against the earth floor of the drydock, his blue-felt boots are quiet. He has no wish to disturb Hakoda, and whoever is with him, so he moves forward silently. </p><p>The first thing he sees is two figures bent close to each other, each blue-clad, their heads bare, their outerwear cast off to reveal the warm winter clothes of yak wool and muskmoose fur. Their feet, like his, are shod in blue felt boots, and their hair is loose about their faces.</p><p>Hakoda’s face is cradled in Bato’s hands. Zuko stills. His breath crystallizes before his face; fogs his vision; surely it has obscured his sight. Hakoda’s hands are twined in Bato’s hair, he leans against his second’s shoulder, their legs are tangled round each other.</p><p>The Water Tribe is much less formal than the Fire Nation; Zuko has learned this lesson many times over. He must not understand what he is seeing, Hakoda cannot, certainly he would not-</p><p>Bato murmurs something in Hakoda’s ear, and touches his lips to the chieftain’s mouth.</p><p>_______________________</p><p><br/>Royal Caldera City is situated in the crater of a long-extinct volcano, but across the bay, from the north face of Igni Fallow, a live volcano can be seen at sea, spewing smoke and ash into the sky at semi-regular intervals. Once a year or so, typically around the summer solstice, but not always, the magma that bubbles through its inner chambers spills out in noxious, pyroclastic flows that boil the ocean around the island, and send up clouds of acid smoke and laze. In the old days, Fire Lords executed political dissidents by placing them in shackles by the sea during the height of summer. They choked to death on tiny particles of volcanic glass, and they perished in agony, ripped apart from the insides, or boiled to death by the salt sea, if they were lucky.</p><p>When Zuko was thirteen, or maybe fourteen, he’s starting to forget, his uncle took him (just him, not even his guards went with) on a silk-sailed skiff out to the volcano, and together they climbed up the beds of obsidian and igneous rock, and looked into the depths of the crater.</p><p>The black smoke swirled thickly off towards the west, the way the wind blew, and the lava bubbled, uneasily housed in its den of rock.</p><p>“It is pressure that turns earth to fire,” his uncle had said, peering into the bubbling crater, balanced precariously on the edge of the cliff face. “Deep underground, heat and weight bear down, and down, and down until rock becomes magma, and the magma is forced through tight channels and into unsteady chambers, upthrust gradually up towards the surface, until it spills out to the sea. My advice for you, Prince Zuko, when you are grown, is to be aware that nothing is hidden, only concealed, and what you ignore will not always ignore you. ” They had spent the better part of the morning watching the liquid rock roiling at their feet, before his uncle had taken him back to Caldera.</p><p>Only later he had understood the trip for what it was - a test of his loyalty, a test of his trustworthiness. He had been granted the second of four ceremonial titles when they returned - Zuko, Son of Ozai, son of Azulon, Crown Prince of the Fire Nation, Incarnate Light of Agni.</p><p>________________________________________</p><p>Zuko feels his stomach crater, feels acid bubbling inside. Hakoda draws Bato closer to him, and Zuko turns to flee, to escape the shame percolating in his veins. But his feet do not obey him, he stumbles, and Hakoda glances his way. Zuko expects fury, expects Katara’s father to leap to his feet and demand to know what he saw, skulking behind the wintering boats like some half-starved cat-jackal. But Hakoda does not leap away from Bato, he only shifts so he is more comfortably settled in his helmsman’s arms.</p><p>“Oh, Zuko,” he says. “Good, you’re here.”</p><p>“Your boy looks pale, Koda,” Bato says. Zuko is certain his cheeks are drained of every drop of blood, and he can feel his heart lodged sideways in his throat. Is what he saw graven on his face?</p><p>“He does,” Hakoda says. “Zuko, are you well?” Zuko coughs, trying to dislodge his words from around his constricting windpipe.</p><p>“Perhaps he’s unaware there are more kinds of union than the purely spiritual,” Bato says. His tone drips with irony, and Zuko, if possible, feels himself pale further.</p><p>“I saw nothing,” he says, aware that saying he saw nothing is hardly convincing. No one who saw nothing would feel the need to say so.</p><p>“Zuko,” Hakoda says, gently. “Are you quite alright? Do you need me to absolve you of the obligation to hold your breath, or are you perhaps clenching every muscle in your body until I permit you to stand at ease? What’s wrong?”</p><p>“I didn’t mean to see,” he says. “I’m sorry; obviously I will say nothing, to do so would be to violate your honor as my host-”</p><p>“He’s babbling, perhaps he’s caught Yakaru’s fever,” Bato says, helpfully, from beside Hakoda. </p><p>“Zuko,” Hakoda says. “You are aware that Bato and I- Katara did tell you, did she not?”</p><p>“I am aware of your history,” Zuko says, wondering what, exactly, he ought to say. It was bad enough finding his mother and Iroh together, let alone Hakoda and his helmsman. How can he best salvage this situation, how can he save himself from the memory of the child’s teeth dribbling from his mouth encased in gobbets of blood? </p><p>“I know your people practice marriage differently than we do,” Hakoda says, cautiously. “But you do know that Bato and I are bound to each other, do you not?”</p><p>“As chieftain and helmsman, yes,” Zuko says, and Bato actually bursts into laughter, merry, nothing like the laugh of a man who has been caught in debauchery. </p><p>“Zuko,” Hakoda says, very gently. He speaks the way Katara does when she’s trying to be serious but is holding in a great gale of laughter. “Bato is mine, and I am Bato’s. We are each other’s.” And then, right in front of Zuko, as though it were nothing shameful or obscene or vile (the way the child’s breath had come in gasps, rising broken, ragged, torn apart on his jagged teeth, the way blood had pooled with spittle and tears, and his screams had faded to voiceless, piercing sobs), Bato kisses Hakoda, the way Zuko would kiss Katara.</p><p>Zuko looks from one man to the other, and feels his stomach tilt uncomfortably.</p><p>“Is it not- are you not- I don’t- won’t your people curse you?”</p><p>“Why?” Bato asks, almost conversationally, but Zuko hears iron festering in the question’s depths, and he shivers. “What are you going to do, string us up by our necks, facing north, and castrate us alive?”</p><p>“Bato-” Hakoda says, warningly, but his second does not shift his steely gaze from Zuko. </p><p>“You may be willing to wash away your memories with ethanol, Koda, but I have not forgotten what was done to our sailors by the kin of your son.”</p><p>“We have put the war behind us,” Hakoda says, with firm finality.</p><p>“As the boy if he has.” Bato says. His words are chiller than the gelid wind outside. “Ask him what should be done to <em>sodomites</em>.” Zuko trembles where he stands; he finds himself wishing he had never moved from beside Katara. (Kuzon, that was the boy’s name, common as wheatgrass, but always laughing. He was a bender too, and he didn’t cry even when Azula shot sparks at them. Zuko had never heard him cry, until his father had, had-)</p><p>“Zuko,” Hakoda says, gently. “Did you truly not know?”</p><p>“No,” he says. His mouth is dry, he knows what was done, what is done, to men like that, who do that, in the Fire Nation. “I meant no offence, I am sorry.”</p><p>“Walk with me to fetch the blackfish fat,” Hakoda says. Zuko nods, and allows the chieftain to lead him deeper into the drydocks. </p><p>“I thought it was obvious, or that Katara would have told you. I know how your people are about- about our customs,” Hakoda says.</p><p>“Chieftain,” Zuko says. His question clings in his throat, a burr long buried beneath skin, a stone wedged deep into the frog of an ostrich-horse’s hoof.</p><p>“Yes?”</p><p>“Isn’t it- don’t you- do you not consider it shameful?”</p><p>“No,” Hakoda says. “What would be shameful about it?”</p><p>“It’s against nature,” Zuko says, and Hakoda frowns.</p><p>“In what way? Love and lust are as natural as breathing.”</p><p>“But-” Zuko starts.</p><p>“Do you know what was done to us, Zuko?” Hakoda asks. “I think you do. I want you to consider what seems more unnatural, torturing men to death for choosing to accept affection when it is given, or finding love where it is offered.” Zuko takes a shuddering breath (Kuzon’s face had not been face-shaped anymore, he had coughed up tissue and blood and teeth, his breath had rattled through his lips like wind through the stripped branches of a dying oak. Zuko can remember the way his sobs faded to wheezes, the way he stopped sounding human, the way his pain rendered him almost an animal. He had been ten.) “Just think about it,” Hakoda says. “And here, I will make use of you. Carry this barrel up for me, please.”</p><p>“Hakoda,” he says, hesitantly.</p><p>“Hm?”</p><p>“Is it truly not- I just was always taught that it was a great evil, an overturning of the order of the world.” (He had kissed Kuzon mostly as a joke, mostly without thinking, without meaning, the way children pick flowers or decide they are hungry after a full meal.)</p><p>“My love for Bato is not the reason the world is in chaos,” Hakoda says, and Zuko ducks his head to avoid the chieftain’s gaze.</p><p>Hakoda and Bato chat easily as the three of them waterproof the new boats. Zuko tries not to think, and finds himself imagining the way the great bubbles of lava rose slowly towards him, towards the surface of the volcano’s crater. When they burst open, they spewed poisonous smoke and liquid fire in their wake. (He had not seen Kuzon again, afterwards. Could a child survive a beating severe enough that most of his teeth were knocked from his mouth? Was that the only thing that was done to him?)</p><p>_______________________________</p><p>That evening Katara draws him away from the gathering long before the first story is finished, and down into one of the many labyrinthine storage rooms that have a locking door. Not for the first time, he wonders just how much of the city’s design is intended to urge couples towards procreation.</p><p>A good half of the huts in her tribe’s quarter of the city are uninhabited.</p><p>“I missed you today,” she murmurs against his lips, her deft hands already pulling aside layers of felt and fur. “I wanted you, I went to find you, but Dad said you were on the glacier.”</p><p>“I was trying to bend,” he says. She clicks her tongue on the roof of her mouth, and he pulls her against him. She laughs at the ferocity of his kiss.</p><p>“My dad said you were a bit disturbed about him and Bato.”</p><p>“I’m sorry to have offended him.” She swats his shoulder.</p><p>“You’re always so gloomy,” she says. “You didn’t offend him. Bato, maybe, but he lives to be offended. My dad likes you Zuko, a lot more than I thought he would.” He chooses not to dwell on that, nor on the way his stomach crawls with shame, nor on the fact that another day has passed, that he and Katara both are one day closer to the day when news will break through the swirling southern hurricane, and he will be forced to leave her and head back to his nation, so he can-</p><p>can what? Will there be anyone left to fight for him? Will there be anyone to fight for? (He cannot even bend.) </p><p>(Perhaps it is a gift from the spirits. Perhaps Agni will take away his firebending, will release his hold on him, will permit him to become Water Tribe.)</p><p>Katara kisses him and in almost the same gesture draws him down to the fur-spread floor, clad only in her white linen wraps.</p><p>Her touches are a labyrinth he has no desire to escape.</p><p> </p>
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